Compilation of Civil War Statistical
Data and Information
The first combat related fatality of the war was a man name
Elmer Elsworth, who was shot on May 24th, 1861, while removing a
Confederate flag from the roof of a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia.
Ellsworth was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln.
Estimating The Cost * After the end of the Civil War, "number Crunchers" and
historians began to compile facts and figures as a way to help figure out the
cost of the bloody four year struggle. Exact numbers are iffy, at best, and
impossible to rely upon. Over the years historians have been able to agree on
general estimates:
Estimating The Numbers * More than 2,000,000 soldiers and sailors
fought for the North during the Civil War, while less than 750,000 men fought
for the South.
Estimating Deaths * Union deaths during the war reached as high as 360,000 men,
less than one third of those were combat related. Most of the deaths were caused
by diseases. Diarrhea was the most deadly, killing more than 44,500 men.
Estimating Black Soldiers * Figures for the almost 200,000 Northern
black soldiers are even more startling. More than 29,000 died of disease, while
only 2,751 succumbed to combat related causes.
Estimating Confederate Deaths * Confederate deaths have been calculated
as somewhere less than 260,000 men, with 164,000 estimated to have been caused
by disease.
Officers Of the South's
425 generals, 82 percent survived the war; * 92 percent of the North's 583
generals survived.
Estimating Prison Deaths * More than 30,000 Union soldiers died while incarcerated in
Confederate prisons. * More than 26,000 Southerners died in Union
prisons.
Sailors * Only 4,084 of the 132,554 Union sailors died during the
war. * Only 1,084 died in combat, with the rest killed by disease or by
accident.
Combat Related Casualties * The combat deaths include 342 scalded to
death when their ships' boilers were struck by enemy fire and 308 sailors who
drowned. * Five thousand soldiers in the Union armies drowned during the
war.
Abraham Lincoln was the first American President to wear a
beard. The look set a deffinite trend and of the next 9 men to hold the
high office, only William McKinley was clean shaven.
Military Events By State: There were more than 10,000 battles,
engagements, skirmishes, and other military events. Starting with the state that
recorded the highest number: Virginia 2,154
Kentucky 453
Tennessee 1,462
Alabama 336
Missouri 1,162
N.Carolina 313
Arkansas 771
S.Carolina 239
W.Virginia 632
Maryland 203
Louisiana 566
Florida 168
Georgia 549 All other states and territories
saw even less action than did Florida. While other states saw none at all.
Many firsts were born of the Civil war. Some of them good, some
not. Here are but a handful and they include the first railroad artillery,
submarine, periscope for trench warfare, land mine fields, naval
torpedoes, antiaircraft fire (Confederates firing at the balloon
Intrepid), snipers using telescopic sights on rifles, repeating rifles
(Winchester started working with repeating rifes during the Civil War),
fixed ammunition, organized medical and nursing corps, workable machine
gun (the Gatling Gun), income tax, withholding tax, tobacco tax, American
conscription (the draft), Medal of Honor, battle photography, bugle call
"taps," African American US Army officer (Major M. R. Delany), U.S. Navy
Admiral, widescale use of anesthetics for the wounded and American
presidential assassination.
Union and Confederate Indians in
the Civil War
THE Cherokee,
Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole were the only native American tribes who
took part in the civil war. Click here to-->Learn
More
Originally West Virginia was to be called "Kanawha."
