I was trying to avoid the usual claims of whitewashing the suffering of southern civilians during the war by erring on the side of generosity in calculating civilian deaths.
Comparison with any other great civil war in history is just not in the books.
Even at Lawrence, where close onto 200 unarmed men and boys were murdered, the raiders, even though generally drunk, treated ladies with due courtesy. Often tipping their hats to them before tossing their husbands and sons into burning buildings.
Compare that to months of mass rapes in Berlin in WWII.
Or any other of countless atrocities.
The Thirty Years War, for example, is said to have depopulated 2/3 of Germany and lead eventually to many seeking refuge in the New World.
World War Two is also hard to estimate civilian deaths -- but not because they were too few to find, but rather too many to count.
So, even though millions of victims are known by name, untold millions more can only be estimated.
And those estimates start around 75 million total, about half of them civilians.
Tens of millions in WWII verses a few dozen named civilian victims in the US Civil War.
That is not simply a difference in quantity, it's a vast difference in the quality of soldiers and their leaders.