New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll - Historum

**tjadams** · April 4th, 2012, 05:11 PM

New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll
By GUY GUGLIOTTA-Published: April 2, 2012

Quote:

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history. But new research shows that the numbers were far too low.
By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.
The new figure is already winning acceptance from scholars. Civil War History, the journal that published Dr. Hacker’s paper, called it “among the most consequential pieces ever to appear” in its pages. And a pre-eminent authority on the era, Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said:
“It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/sc...imes&seid=auto

It is a sobering possibility that this number is true.

ucanefan · April 4th, 2012, 06:11 PM

wow thanks for posting

Decoded12 · April 5th, 2012, 05:17 PM

Simply amazing, is it a flat 750,000 or is it a bit above/a bit below?

**Salah** · April 5th, 2012, 05:18 PM

Definitely some sobering statistics there.

**tjadams** · April 5th, 2012, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Decoded12

Simply amazing, is it a flat 750,000 or is it a bit above/a bit below?

Kind of reminds me of the losses for Russia in WWII.
There is an 'official' number, but common sense would say
it would be higher.

ReaganSmash · April 5th, 2012, 08:18 PM

I heard while I was listening to a radio show the other day. It's amazing that so many died in war between people of the same country.

**tjadams** · April 5th, 2012, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaganSmash

I heard while I was listening to a radio show the other day. It's amazing that so many died in war between people of the same country.

The sheer slaughter of their tactics. The way of warfare, the marching
straight into entrenched positions seems madness today, but of course
it was all they knew in their day.

**Rongo** · April 6th, 2012, 02:25 AM

Plus the primitive medical and hygiene standards. 2/3rds of the deaths were caused by disease, not battle. And even many of the battle deaths could have been prevented with modern medical practices.

As horrific as these numbers sound today, they were actually low by standards of the era. The Crimean War had a similar death toll. The Napoleonic Wars in Europe in the early 1800s killed 4 million people. The Taiping Rebellion in China, that occurred simultaneously to the U.S. Civil War, killed an astonishing 20 million people.

OUmillenium · April 6th, 2012, 07:00 AM

wow

Warfare technology had truly surpassed tactics and medicine

**tjadams** · April 6th, 2012, 07:02 AM

The six figure death tolls started me thinking: no war crime trials? Is this idea something
new?