Civil War Facts
- Total number killed: 750,000 ― equivalent to 7.5 million lives lost in a war today.
- Disease, in fact, killed roughly twice as many soldiers as did combat.
- Dysentery and diarrhea alone killed over 44,000 Union soldiers, more than ten times the Northern dead at Gettysburg.
- In an era before germ theory, surgeons’ unclean saws and hands became vectors for infection that killed a quarter or more of the 60,000 or so men who underwent amputation.
- Some 50,000 of civilians may have died as a result of the conflict.
- Economists have calculated that the cost of the Civil War, estimated at over $10 billion in 1860 dollars, would have been more than enough to buy the freedom of every slave, purchase them land, and even pay reparations.
Source: The Atlantic.
“Economists have calculated that the cost of the Civil War, estimated at over $10 billion in 1860 dollars, would have been more than enough to buy the freedom of every slave, purchase them land, and even pay reparations”
Well, societies haven’t always been known to solve societal problems through viable economic solutions that in effect ends up avoiding casualties. Conversely, today it’s easier to make more profit from wars.
It is easy in hindsight to say that that is a better outcome for everybody, but at time nobody would’ve bought it.
If we ever destroy mankind, it’ll be easy in hindsight to say…oh wait.
Isn’t the U.S. the only country that required full-scale war to end (African) slavery? A lot of societies were able to do it peacefully or with minimal violence.
“Some 50,000 of civilians may have died as a result of the conflict.”
That would probably translate to about 5 million civilians today. I’m glad things are a little more stable in that sense but it only takes one bad event to cause chaos in which case we’d be in much deeper trouble considering we have the ability to quickly create massive casualties.
That’s true. We live in a much more uncertain world today. We may be enjoying an era of stability in this region but that could change very quickly. Scary to think about.
“In an era before germ theory, surgeons’ unclean saws and hands became vectors for infection that killed a quarter or more of the 60,000 or so men who underwent amputation.”
What a messy war and the last bullet point illustrates how unnecessary it was after all.
“Economists have calculated that the cost of the Civil War, estimated at over $10 billion in 1860 dollars, would have been more than enough to buy the freedom of every slave, purchase them land, and even pay reparations.”
It wasn’t until 1863 (two full years into the war) that freedom for slaves was even proposed. Most Northerners didn’t think that they were fighting to free the slaves, although it seems that Southerners may have related slavery and the war a bit more (it was in their CSA State Constitutions). Point being, I don’t know if this stat would’ve been that important at the time.
True. We always boil down the Civil War to slavery because that was the most visible lasting effect, but if the South had been crushed there is no evidence that slavery would’ve been abolished in the places that it already existed. That tells us a lot about the immediate motivations of the war.
“Total number killed: 750,000 ― equivalent to 7.5 million lives list in a war today.”
Kind of a funny stat. I understand the point he’s making, but it’s very collectivist in tone. The 6.75 million extra dead would say that those two numbers aren’t equivalent.
Unfortunately, slavery — which was almost universal before the modern world — persists to this day, with an estimated 20 million people enslaved worldwide.