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Civilian Deaths in the US Civil War
Civil War Talk blog ^ | 2 Sept. 2013 | Ralph Davis

Posted on 09/02/2013 12:49:27 PM PDT by AnalogReigns

Relating to Syria:

Not a blog or article authored by me (see link above), however, it puts into perspective the USA's own 4 year civil war....where experts estimate (and no one really knows, or can know...) 100,000 to 250,000 CIVILIAN DEATHS were caused by the war--the vast majority being in the South.

Some historians estimate that as many as 50,000 civilians died of starvation as a result of Sherman's march to the sea alone.


TOPICS: History; Military/Veterans; Miscellaneous; Society
KEYWORDS: civilwar; deathtoll; dixie; greatestpresident; military; obama; sevenyearswar; syria; thirdsilesianwar; whinywhinygirl
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To: humblegunner

And foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Following your logic, you had better stop reading or posting on Free Republic, “as any retard can write a blog.”

My undisputed point is that even with our democratic, freedom loving, human-rights respecting US government—we killed a heck of a lot of civilians in our own Civil War.

Therefore we should keep out of the dictatorial, freedom-hating, human-rights ignoring, Syrian-government’s war—and not be surprised that yes, they do kill civilians. As Uncle Sam has as well!


21 posted on 09/02/2013 1:34:42 PM PDT by AnalogReigns (because the real world is not digital...)
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To: AnalogReigns

I think the “reported” vs “unreported” stats from CW1 were probably wildly different. Think about the data and communications systems then. Soldiers were “mustered in” and numbered, literally a known quantity. The casualties among active military units might be known to 10% + or -.

For civilians, white and black, the casualties—reported and unreported—across the rural South in an era of very limited and inconsistent reporting and data storage, might easily vary by 10 to 90%. It would take an incredible amount of new study to accurately tabulate civilian deaths. If there were (top of head) 500,000 military casualties, I could guess a number of civilian dead at 100K or a million, easily, if you include starvation and the BIGGER factor, deaths caused by illness as a direct result of dislocations caused by the war.

Something I’ve been studying recently is mass death caused simply by dislocating people. Think of Cromwell and the invasion of Ireland around the 1620s. Estimates are that a quarter to a half of the Irish population died in five years, millions of people. Cromwell didn’t set up gas chambers, he just dislocated people to places without food, where they had to drink ditch water and lived exposed to the elements.

In 1861-65, a lot of the same dynamics were in play. Who counted the civilian dead? Did they show up (as missing) in later census counts?


22 posted on 09/02/2013 1:42:35 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: wideawake

the claim that Sherman’s March resulted in starvation for anyone is a myth invented after the war.

I tend to agree. Sherman used the 1860 Census reports to determine his most effective field of march. He needed to feed his troops and he needed to know where the productive farms were.

Having read numerous accounts of Sherman’s campaign in the South, it should be noted that he, and many of the people that were with him, were utterly astounded at the amount of food and materiel that was being withheld from the South’s own military effort. Barns and warehouses in the South were overflowing with food, weapons, livestock, clothing etc.


23 posted on 09/02/2013 1:46:56 PM PDT by Paisan
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To: AnalogReigns
Following your logic

Yeah, stop right there.

Back up, read to comprehend, and rethink your statement.

24 posted on 09/02/2013 1:47:21 PM PDT by humblegunner
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To: Travis McGee

Cromwell did his work in Ireland in the 1640’s, but your premise is painfully correct.


25 posted on 09/02/2013 1:47:40 PM PDT by Castlebar
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To: humblegunner; AnalogReigns
The reason not to intervene in Syria's civil war is clear.

It does not need to be based on specious comparisons to the US Civil War.

The reason is that there is no armed faction in Syria that can be used as an ally.

You have the government, who are Milosevic-style Red fascists. You have the Sunni extremists, who are effectively Al-Qaeda. You have the Shi'ites, who are effectively proxies of Iran and Hezbollah. The Christians are small in number, have no armed resistance and are associated with Assad.

There is no mission.

26 posted on 09/02/2013 1:49:02 PM PDT by wideawake
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To: wideawake

Faced with the Syria issue, President humblegunner states:

“Sucks to be you, don’t it?”


27 posted on 09/02/2013 1:51:21 PM PDT by humblegunner
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To: AnalogReigns

There is a lot of confusion (some of it no doubt deliberate) about the number of civilians killed as a direct result of military action (shot, killed by canon fire, bombing etc) as opposed to deaths that happened to civilians because there just happened to be a war and they were in the middle of it, or because of other things (were all the Jews who were shot in Kiev killed directly because of military action, or because of Nazi policies?).

R. J. Rummel has done a very scholarly work (look for the term “democide” that he coined). There is also a book of his: “Death by Government”.

Certainly many died in, for example, Vicksburg, due to the siege. Is this direct military action or not?

This pales in comparison to what happened in the siege of Leningrad. Go to Piskaryovskoe (I don’t have the correct font so can’t type it in Russian) cemetery there and see the ranks of mass graves.

Was the British bombing of Dresden the right thing to do? What about the American bombing of Tokyo on 9-10 March 1945 and of other cities? I was struck in the latter case by a USAAF officer who walked through the wreckage after the war. He said although the houses were burned down, in most of them there was a piece of machinery (drill press. lathe, saw) still standing. The military had of course farmed out the military production to local homes as a cottage industry.

An interesting counterexample is Gettysburg. In that horrific three-day battle, as far as history tells, only one civilian was killed, even though on the first day the battle raged through the town as the Union forces retreated.

(Her name was Virginia Wade, shot while cooking in her kitchen. She was a friend of a guy named Wesley Culp, who grew up in that town on the Culp farm, joined the confederate army, and was it appears killed on his family farm.)


28 posted on 09/02/2013 1:52:03 PM PDT by Sigurdrifta
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To: AnalogReigns

I bet it hurt when he pulled that number out of his rear end...


29 posted on 09/02/2013 1:52:47 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Travis McGee
If it’s not double and triple checked, it’s dubious.

Right you are!

"Never trust anything you read on the Internet."
Thomas Jefferson, 1788

30 posted on 09/02/2013 1:52:53 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: wideawake
I just watched Gone WTW a couple of days ago.

For some reason a lot of the scenes struck me as very MST3K like. Especially the burning Atlanta giant barn collapse scene.

31 posted on 09/02/2013 1:55:07 PM PDT by rawcatslyentist (Jeremiah 50:32 "The arrogant one will stumble and fall ; / ?)
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To: wideawake

Just a neutral reader here. ‘wideawake’ appears to be anything but that.
1)Headline doesn’t mention Sherman.
2)myth? unintentionally spread?? sound like opinions.
3)Napoleonic Wars were absent large numbers Black slaves with no way to support themselves.That would suggest a possible worse situation here.
4)Vicksburg number of starvation victims PROBABLY 200-300? Visit Ft Mott on the Delaware.
5)How do you know what is happening in Syria? And then you say”by government troops and by terrorists”.
6)’Quantrill...accused of killing several hundred’ This is a different era. greater population and apparent use of CBWA.
Are you perhaps a Lincoln relative? :-)


32 posted on 09/02/2013 1:55:22 PM PDT by aumrl (let's keep it real Conservatives)
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To: wideawake

And that little synopsis doesn’t even factor in the Alawite sect.


33 posted on 09/02/2013 2:02:50 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Secret Agent Man

There were those in Britain willing to help, I don’t believe it was a national policy. Some ship yards aided the South at the very least.


34 posted on 09/02/2013 2:07:01 PM PDT by gorush (History repeats itself because human nature is static)
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To: aumrl
(1) The excerpted portion of the article does mention Sherman.

(2) Are there any contemporary records of starvation? No. Hence myth. Is there any evidence that any general in the Civil War marched an army anywhere with the intention of spreading diseases? No. Neither of these conclusions are matters of opinion.

(3) The Napoleonic Wars lasted 18 years, not 4. They affected a population several times the size of the US. They involved millions of Russian serfs, whose situation was not much different than that of slaves. They also involved millions of Egyptian peasants.

(4) Vicksburg had a population of 4500 before the siege. It had a population of 4000 after the siege. The math is not difficult.

(5) Syria is about the most well-reported war zone in human history at this point.

(6) My whole point is that Syria 2013 is not Kansas 1864.

35 posted on 09/02/2013 2:09:44 PM PDT by wideawake
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To: Dead Corpse
And because the last civil war DID have armies and battle lines. The next one will be fought by ‘groups’ that will form, morph into something else, and the merge with other groups. While it will be basically conservatives against idiots, there will be enough splinter groups of crazy ideas to make it a treacherous war of shifting allegiances.

I fully expect a military dictatorship to emerge. If the right person is at the head of it, I don't think I'll mind. I no longer have faith that the problems this country has can be solved at the ballot box.

36 posted on 09/02/2013 2:16:49 PM PDT by I cannot think of a name
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To: I cannot think of a name
Starving people generally prefer an effective dictatorship.
37 posted on 09/02/2013 2:28:09 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Travis McGee

“Starving people generally prefer an effective dictatorship.”

Yes, and working people often prefer an effective dictatorship that will make lazy cancers get off their ass and go to work! (Which is what would have avoided the chief need for a civil war in the first place.)


38 posted on 09/02/2013 2:31:56 PM PDT by I cannot think of a name
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To: wideawake

In reality, 0 people died of starvation as a result of Sherman’s March.


And you know this..... HOW??..


39 posted on 09/02/2013 2:42:40 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: hosepipe
Sherman's quartermasters kept records of the provisions they confiscated - and they were incentivized to exaggerate.

The amount of grain they confiscated amounted to less than 10% of Georgia's average annual harvest. Georgia was a state that exported much of its annual grain harvest both internally and externally.

There was no shortage of food in Georgia that year or since.

Also, a common complaint among those in Sherman's path was that his soldiers were interested in the more expensive goods: whisky and cured hams, for example and bypassed boring grain for more enjoyable items.

It was a winter of porridge and potatoes in Georgia - not a starvation winter.

40 posted on 09/02/2013 2:57:27 PM PDT by wideawake
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