How many americans died in the civil war

It still holds several notorious records, such as the highest number of average deaths per day Read more of the shocking statistics from the War that divided our nation.

Pillow, Tennessee on April 12, Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. And in the US Civil War, like all wars, men deserted or defected, bodies sank forever into the mud or were blown to bits or were misidentified, and troops initially listed as wounded in action subsequently perished from their injuries. Confederate records were largely destroyed in the war's final stages, when the Union army captured its capital Richmond, Virginia.

For more than a century, it has been accepted with a grain of salt that about , Americans died in the conflict, with more than half of those dying off the battlefield from disease or festering wounds.

All along, however, historians sensed that number underrepresented the death toll. Nor had any historian undertaken the mammoth task of devising and executing a new count.

That was until December, when historian J David Hacker published a paper that used demographic methods and sophisticated statistical software to study newly digitised US census records from to On the other hand, I'm a demographic historian, and we need to do the most precise job we can at determining what the impact of the war was.

Prof Hacker's findings, published in the December issue of Civil War History , have been endorsed by some of the leading historians of the conflict. The publication's editors wrote that his scholarship was "among the most consequential pieces ever to appear in this journal's pages". Prof Hacker began by taking digitised samples from the decennial census counts taken Using statistics software SPSS, he counted the number of native-born white men of military age in and determined how many of that group were still alive in He compared that survival rate with the survival rates of the men of the same ages from , and from - the year census periods before and after the Civil War.

He controlled for other demographic assumptions, including mortality rates of foreign-born soldiers, added the relatively small number of black soldiers killed, and compared the numbers with the rates of female survival over the same periods. A true accounting of the number of men in the armies can be approached through a review of three primary documents: enlistment rolls, muster rolls, and casualty lists.

Following any of these investigative methods one will encounter countless flaws and inconsistencies--the records in question are little sheets of paper generated and compiled years ago by human beings in one of the most stressful and confusing environments to ever exist. Enlistment stations were set up in towns and cities across the country, but for the most part only those stations in major northern cities can be relied upon to have preserved records.

Confederate enlistment rolls are virtually non-existent. Muster rolls, generated every few months by commanding officers, list soldiers in their respective units as "present" or "absent.

Overlooking the common misspelling of names and general lack of specificity concerning the condition of a "present" or "absent" soldier, muster rolls provide a valuable look into the past. Unfortunately, these little pieces of paper were usually transported by mule in the rear of a fighting army. Their preservation was adversely affected by rain, river crossings, clerical errors, and cavalry raids. Casualty lists gives the number of men in a unit who were killed, wounded, or went missing in an engagement.

However, combat threw armies into administrative chaos and the accounting done in the hours or days immediately following a battle often raises as many questions as it answers. For example: Who are the missing? Weren't many of these soldiers killed and not found? What, exactly, qualifies a wound and did armies account for this the same way? What became of wounded soldiers? Did they rejoin their unit; did they return home; did they die?

A wholly accurate count will almost certainly never be made. The effects of this devastating conflict are still felt today. Civil War Article. Civil War Casualties. Union dead after the Battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg, Pa. Photo by Alexander Gardner. Civil War Service by Population Even with close to total conscription, the South could not match the North's numerical strength. Southerners stood a significantly greater chance of being killed, wounded, or captured. His estimates were based on Confederate muster rolls--many of which were destroyed before he began his study--and many historians have disputed the results.

Union Military Deaths by State Given the relatively complete preservation of Northern records, Fry's examination of Union deaths is far more accurate than his work in the South.