Civil War

[Rick Potter]

For us trivia buffs.

Today is the sesquicentennial of the firing on Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War.

RP

[Jerome Hanby]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the election of Abraham Lincoln was the start of the War of the Rebellion.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm not a history buff, and I don't want to get into the who/what/where/why of the Civil War, but one thing that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around is that about 630,000 people lost their lives in that war. Thinking back to those times and how small the population was and how spread out people were, it really paints a picture to me just how huge this was. Something I think is lost in all the stories and history we see today. 630,000 people in that day and time. That's tremendous. I can't image how huge the conflict had to be to take that many lives. I'm glad I wasn't alive to see it, and I'd hate to see our country go through something so painful.

Put things into perspective, Vietnam shows a loss of 58,000 U.S. WWI shows 116,000, WWII shows 416,000. So we lost more lives fighting each other than WWI,WWII, and Vietnam all combined. Let's hope we never return to those numbers.

[ray hampton]

we need to compare the loss of life to the population census

[Scott Shepherd]

Looks like it was about 30,000,000 people on the census in those years. So 30,000,000 people and we lost 630,000. To me, that's huge, numbers and percentages.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Scott,

I agree it was a huge number by raw numbers and percentages of population. I pray we never see anything like that again within this country.

[Charlie Reals]

Without googling it I would say we lost as many at Gettysburg as we did in Vietnam per capita . We lost thousands a day wounded or dead to artillery fire at many battles.

[Pat Germain]

I heard a series of stories on the radio last weekend in recognition of the sequicentennial. I found most interesting the story of a photographer who set out to capture images of the war. He and his assistants had expected to see situations as portrayed in famous paintings; Napolean leading a charge or George Washington crossing the Delaware river. Of course, what they actually saw was grim, grisly combat. They were all horrified.

Photography was still new at the time and there was no way to easily copy photos. Few people saw the pictures until this war photographer presented a formal display of his horrifyingly realistic images. The response was overwhelmingly negative. He had hoped to sell these historically significant pictures. But people didn't want to see his pictures, let alone buy them.

Another photographer became famous for his Civil War pictures. These are the pictures we saw growing up when learning about the war. Many featured dead soldiers grasping their rifles. This is a big clue these photographs were staged. Rifles were far too precious to leave behind on the battlefield. Apparently, all of this guy's photos were fakes. And people liked those pictures.

[Belinda Barfield]

I believe Matthew Brady was the best known photographer of Civil War images.

Loss of life would be significantly less if a similar war happened tomorrow. If wounded, many times death was the best you could hope for, not the worst. Amputations without anesthesia or pain meds, rotting infections with no antibiotics, dying on the battlefield as someone was going through your pockets and stripping you of your boots. Miles and miles from home with no e-mail, no phone, barely functioning snail mail - far different from today. There are hardly words to describe how horrible it must have been to be fighting on either side. The Yankees did have it a little better than the Rebels though. And then the South had to suffer through Reconstruction.

[Belinda Barfield]

If anyone is interested, Ancestry.com is offering free access to their Civil War records, only two days left.

[ray hampton]

Looks like it was about 30,000,000 people on the census in those years. So 30,000,000 people and we lost 630,000. To me, that's huge, numbers and percentages.

mine calculator shows 1 death to every 47 people or more than two percent of the population

[Belinda Barfield]

Census info for 1860 broken down by state. http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm

Free population in that census 27,489,561. Initially it was mostly the free population that were combatants so that changes the ratio some.

[Belinda Barfield]

Congressional Research Service statistics for casualties of all U.S. wars. Interesting reading for trivia buffs.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

[Dave Anderson NH]

As Belinda noted, the quality and level of medical science was low at that time and as many died of wounds and sickness and disease as were outright killed in combat. In much of the 19th century a hospital was a place you went to die. An equally important factor was the use of Napoleonic era tactics which were suitable for relatively low powered and inaccurate muskets and artillery but caused mass carnage when used against long range rifled barrels in both shoulder fired weapons and in artillery. A smoothbore musket was lucky to hit a group of 100 men at 100 feet while a model 1863 Springfield rifled musket was accurate to 3-400 meters and deadly to twice that distance. The changes in technology played a large role in the casualty counts when tactics were not modified to adapt to the changing conditions. The only reason our casualties in WW I were relatively low was that we cam late to the party. The inability of the various high commands in WW I to adapt to further technological changes caused the casualties of millions from machineguns, poison gas, and advanced artillery. Beginning to notice a pattern here folks?

[ray hampton]

the civil war been over [ well it are suppose to be over ] for 150 years but it is still causing problems for some people, I have try to trace my family tree but run into a dead-end close to the date of the civil war