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.'"

Comments

And so history becomes a science

[Kupfernigk]

History seems to be benefiting from a new generation of numerate historians. It was an earlier computer analysis of the accounts of the British Royal Navy that showed that for many years it was the most expensive arm of government, and how important its financing was as a cause of the English Civil Wars. (I'm sure there's a lot more like this going on but this happens to be my period of interest.)

I'd like to see the same analysis applied to WW2 and Vietnam, especially the excess fatalities for 5 years after the wars. I am pretty sure the real costs of wars are systematically concealed by governments.

Count still too low?

[Nidi62]

Looking at only native-born white men of military age still really underestimates the participation and casualty levels, unless they are doing a lot of extrapolation. Remember, you had boys as young as 12 or 13 volunteering, and while they were in most cases drummers, that could still put them in the thick of the fighting, and many would have lied about their age to follow their fathers or brothers. There were women that fought as men (only a few cases are known, but there were probably more). Many immigrants were likely pressed into service as soon as they got off the boats, and a lot of them were probably not documented accurately. And lastly (and the most un-PC) there were the free blacks that fought on both sides. While most blacks fought for the North, there was a not insignificant number of free blacks that fought for the South. Of course it goes against the commonly taught narrative that the Civil War was about slavery and not a conflict between differing economic systems and beliefs in government, so this last bit is rarely mentioned, which gives a grave disservice to all those that fought. In any case, there were many demographics beyond what this latest study measured that fought in the war, and a lot of them are probably unmeasurable, so we will never know exactly how many fought and how many died, but I suspect that even this latest number is on the low side.

And for the record yes, I have a history degree (for which I wrote a major paper on the historiography of the Civil War) and have even worked in a Civil War museum, so I know what I'm talking about.

Re:J.D. Hacker

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see the headlines now: "Hacker increases war casualties by 130 000"