And usually, when applying a tolerance value, it is plus or minus, which means that the number killed could actually be quite lower.
The Southern commanders also didn't collect much data on the number of their soldiers that they murdered themselves to keep them from returning to their homes
Please cite historical data to support this biased allegation.
Of course, when yankee soldiers were caught for desertion, they were properly executed, not murdered in cold blood, right Cindy?
I hold that US soldiers, fighting for an established nation, were bound to do their duty, or suffer the consequences.
The southern criminals, fighting for no cause but their own power, had no legal authority to enforce their criminal conspiracy.
The southern criminals treated southern soldiers who left the "cause" the same way that they treated US soldiers fighting in uniforms, if most of the soldiers were black. They murdered the men who decided to no longer support their criminal conspiracy, in cold blood. Yes, that is what it was, Murder.
Grant was able to parole southern soldiers at Vicksburg, with no exchange. They were, as he put it, mighty tired of the war.
Of course, some violated their parole, but probably fewer than the number of US soldiers that would have been necessary to guard the rebels. That magnanimous act occured at about the same time that US soldiers were being denied simple things like water, at Andersonville.
The Commander there did everything he could, he said. Everything except let them go, as Grant let southern soldiers go. Hell is full of people like him.
You know who you are.
For the battle of Gettysburg, the southern reports were systematically low by about 50%. My interpretation is that Lee falsified the reports so the war would continue.
http://gburginfo.brinkster.net/Casualties.htm
For the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, the return of casualties is far more problematic. The official casualty return compiled by Lee’s medical director in late July 1863 was manifestly incomplete: a total of 20,451, comprising 2,592 killed in action, 12,709 wounded and 5,150 missing. It was apparent at the time that this was not a complete count: the trauma of defeat and retreat and the loss of many officers prevented a proper assessment: many units grossly under reported their losses, and in some cases the returns included none of the “missing”, and when the missing were counted, it was only too often the case that they were in reality either dead or wounded . In the absence of complete official returns, historians have attempted to estimate Confederate casualties at Gettysburg, using different methods of compilation. Prominent among these was Livermore, who, in his widely used essay NUMBERS AND LOSSES, proffered a total of 28,063 rebel casualties at Gettysburg, including 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded and 5,425 unwounded prisoners. His method was simple but controversial…….the report of the US Provost Marshall gave a count of 5,425 unwounded and 6,802 wounded Confederate prisoners in Federal hands, these men being captured between July 1st and July 5th. Livermore then cites the report of the medical director of the Army of Northern Virginia, which admitted that only 776 wounded men were left behind. Extrapolating from this, Livermore concluded that this indicates that 6,026 Confederate wounded were not reported, and should be added to the 12,709 that were counted, thereby increasing the number of wounded to 18,735. Using the ratio of killed to wounded that pertained to the Federal army in the battle, which amounted to 4.6 wounded to every one killed in action, Livermore applies this to the extra 6,026 Confederate wounded, and comes up with an additional 1,311 killed, increasing the officially reported number of 2,592 killed in action to 3,903, a rise of over fifty per cent.