Bodies of Confederate Gathered for Burial (photo by Alexander Gardner)
A recent New York Times article by J. David Hacker contradicted a previously-held certainty of the Civil War: the death toll. It is almost mantra to say that just fewer than 620,000 Americans, 618,222 to be exact, died in our country’s most destructive conflict. We all know the possibilities for inaccuracy; record keeping was not first priority on the battlefields and many men went un- or misreported during the war. Early historians offered widely varied numbers, some reaching all the way up to 850,000 dead, but after 1900 the number settled at 618,222 and has remained undisputed for more than a century.
New analysis of census reports from 1850 to the turn of the century place the death toll at 750,000 Americans, including the casualties from both Union and Confederate armies and taking into account those men who were “discharged to die” and thus did not die in active service.
What does this increase mean for our understandings of the Civil War? The war is already the deadliest and most destructive conflict in our national history, does an additional 130,000 deaths change that? Of course, for historians an increased death toll will raise new questions and change statistical calculations in future research. Having a more accurate idea of the devastation of the Civil War on the country’s population is important; only time will tell what new meanings and understandings we will gain from it.
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[Editors: For more thoughts about the revised casualty figures, see Matt Stanley's related post from January.]
The question I have is whether the increased deaths are equally distributed or more on one side than the other. That would determine some questions about who won various battles or which army was more lethal.
What about civilian deaths? No one ever discusses the toll the War took on the civilians. I would like to know how many non-combatants perished. That would surely advance the death toll.
I don’t think we can talk about this enough. I am using the higher figure in my book, and plan on using it until told not to for my academic work. The better we get with statistics and technology, the more accurate we can become, and we are just silly not to accept new results when those results are backed with solid analysis. The two questions in the above Responses deserve answers.
All very valid points. I think it will be very interesting to see what research comes out of the new numbers.