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Statistical Analysis Raises Civil War Death Count By 20%
Hugh Pickens writes "For more than a century, it has been accepted that about 620,000 Americans died in the the bloodiest, most devastating conflict in American history. But now, BBC reports that historian J. David Hacker has used sophisticated statistical software to determine the war's death toll and found that civil war dead may have been undercounted by as many as 130,000. Hacker began by taking digitized samples from the decennial census counts taken from 1850-1880. Using statistical package SPSS, Hacker counted the number of native-born white men of military age in 1860 and determined how many of that group were still alive in 1870 and compared that survival rate with the survival rates of the men of the same ages from 1850-1860, and from 1870-1880 — the 10-year census periods before and after the Civil War. The calculations yielded the number of 'excess' deaths of military-age men between 1860-1870 — the number who died in the war or in the five subsequent years from causes related to the war. Hacker's findings, published in the December 2011 issue of Civil War History, have been endorsed by some of the leading historians of the conflict. 'The difference between the two estimates is large enough to change the way we look at the war,' writes Hacker. 'The war touched more lives and communities more deeply than we thought, and thus shaped the course of the ensuing decades of American history in ways we have not yet fully grasped. True, the war was terrible in either case. But just how terrible, and just how extensive its consequences, can only be known when we have a better count of the Civil War dead.'"
I think it would be fairer to say systematically misunderstood. As soon as any project becomes even moderately complex, understanding causes of loss can become difficult.
[FUCK BETA]
I actually dislike this kind of numeric analysis. I don't think it is appropriate for history. So there are 'missing people' from the 1860s...those missing people could easily have gone to Canada or Mexico. They could have emigrated to Europe. They could have headed out West and been out of touch with US authorities for years at a time, missing censuses and the like. They certainly had motivation to flee...there was a huge war with drafts on both sides going on, why not head out?
This study is certainly using census data, with all of its warts and flaws.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion. But as the analysis did its best to allow for immigration and emigration, and did comparisons with other periods, your argument needs a bit more beef than "dislike". In my own field of interest, naval history, things like manning levels, pay rates, construction, weights of shot, water capacity, access to navigational equipment and the like turn out to be far better predictors of outcomes than the "Great Man" ideas of historians of the past. The outcome of the Battle of Britain was almost entirely determined by engineering factors - radar, and the fact that the British fighters were developed a little later than the German ones and so benefited from better engineering. The massacres in Rwanda and El Salvador can be better understood by analysing population density, land use and economic power than by speculation over tribal or political conflict. Proper statistical analysis of history - not numeric analysis, whatever that is - is not only illuminating in itself but could eventually give models with predictive power.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."