These deaths were caused by the collapse of agriculture in the South: the destruction of livestock, both food and draft animals; physical destruction of crops and assets such as barns, stables, granaries, tools, roads, bridges, rail and port facilities; such a terrible loss of manpower that there was nobody who could effectively plant and reap, and preserve the harvest.
Plus the horror of epidemic waterborne diseases from springs and wells contaminated with corpses of man and beast.
Anybody know about this?
My main point isas civilized as we think we arein an era without any weapons of mass destruction the USAprimarily by the actions of the US governmentkilled a LOT of our own civilians, during a relatively short period of time.This should cause us some circumspection about getting involved one iota...in the Syrian civil war.
I'm sure there was a goodly number of Southern rural white people who suffered the same fate. Most whites in the South were NOT plantation owners. Many were simply folks trying to eke out a living off land that hadn't been kept up for several years. And after the war, there were fewer men to do the heavy work.
Didn’t happen. See the census reports from 1860 and 1870.