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- The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.
www.britannica.com/event/American-Civil-WarAmerican Civil War | History, Summary, Dates, Causes, Map ...
Sep 29, 2022 · The closest body count for a war of the time period, The Paraguayan War in South America, estimates total losses of 200,000-500,000. At its bloodiest, that war’s maximum estimate matched only the Civil War’s lowest estimate. Here’s why the U.S. Civil War was so brutal. Battle of Antietam. (Wikimedia Commons)
- Overview
- The cost and significance of the Civil War
Above and beyond its superior naval forces, numbers, and industrial and financial resources, the triumph of the North was partly due to the statesmanship of Lincoln, who by 1864 had become a masterful political and war leader, as well as to the increasing skill of Federal officers. The victory can also be attributed in part to failures of Confederate transportation, matériel, and political leadership, despite the strategic and tactical dexterity of such generals as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston.
While desertions plagued both sides, the personal valour and the enormous casualties—both in absolute numbers and in percentage of numbers engaged—have not yet ceased to astound scholars and military historians. On the basis of the three-year standard of enlistment, about 1,556,000 soldiers served in the Federal armies, and about 800,000 men probably served in the Confederate forces, though spotty records make it impossible to know for sure. Traditionally, historians have put war deaths at about 360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederates. In the second decade of the 21st century, however, a demographer used better data and more sophisticated tools to convincingly revise the total death toll upward to 752,000 and indicated that it could be as high as 851,000.
The enormous death rate—roughly 2 percent of the 1860 population of the U.S. died in the war—had an enormous impact on American society. Americans were deeply religious, and they struggled to understand how a benevolent God could allow such destruction to go on for so long. Understanding of the nature of the afterlife shifted as Americans, North and South, comforted themselves with the notion that heaven looked like their front parlors. A new mode of dealing with corpses emerged with the advent of embalming, an expensive method of preservation that helped wealthier families to bring their dead sons, brothers, or fathers home. Finally, a network of federal military cemeteries (and private Confederate cemeteries) grew out of the need to bury the men in uniform who had succumbed to wounds or disease.
Some have called the American Civil War the last of the old-fashioned wars; others have termed it the first modern war. Actually, it was a transitional war, and it had a profound impact, technologically, on the development of modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations. It was the first war in history in which ironclad warships clashed; the first in which the telegraph and railroad played significant roles; the first to use, extensively, rifled ordnance and shell guns and to introduce a machine gun (the Gatling gun); the first to have widespread newspaper coverage, voting by servicemen in the field in national elections, and photographic recordings; the first to organize medical care of troops systematically; and the first to use land and water mines and to employ a submarine that could sink a warship. It was also the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of balloons).
Above and beyond its superior naval forces, numbers, and industrial and financial resources, the triumph of the North was partly due to the statesmanship of Lincoln, who by 1864 had become a masterful political and war leader, as well as to the increasing skill of Federal officers. The victory can also be attributed in part to failures of Confederate transportation, matériel, and political leadership, despite the strategic and tactical dexterity of such generals as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston.
While desertions plagued both sides, the personal valour and the enormous casualties—both in absolute numbers and in percentage of numbers engaged—have not yet ceased to astound scholars and military historians. On the basis of the three-year standard of enlistment, about 1,556,000 soldiers served in the Federal armies, and about 800,000 men probably served in the Confederate forces, though spotty records make it impossible to know for sure. Traditionally, historians have put war deaths at about 360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederates. In the second decade of the 21st century, however, a demographer used better data and more sophisticated tools to convincingly revise the total death toll upward to 752,000 and indicated that it could be as high as 851,000.
The enormous death rate—roughly 2 percent of the 1860 population of the U.S. died in the war—had an enormous impact on American society. Americans were deeply religious, and they struggled to understand how a benevolent God could allow such destruction to go on for so long. Understanding of the nature of the afterlife shifted as Americans, North and South, comforted themselves with the notion that heaven looked like their front parlors. A new mode of dealing with corpses emerged with the advent of embalming, an expensive method of preservation that helped wealthier families to bring their dead sons, brothers, or fathers home. Finally, a network of federal military cemeteries (and private Confederate cemeteries) grew out of the need to bury the men in uniform who had succumbed to wounds or disease.
Some have called the American Civil War the last of the old-fashioned wars; others have termed it the first modern war. Actually, it was a transitional war, and it had a profound impact, technologically, on the development of modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations. It was the first war in history in which ironclad warships clashed; the first in which the telegraph and railroad played significant roles; the first to use, extensively, rifled ordnance and shell guns and to introduce a machine gun (the Gatling gun); the first to have widespread newspaper coverage, voting by servicemen in the field in national elections, and photographic recordings; the first to organize medical care of troops systematically; and the first to use land and water mines and to employ a submarine that could sink a warship. It was also the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of balloons).
Mar 25, 2015 · The economic impact of the war quickly hit the South. By early 1863, the dollar used by the Confederate government had dropped in value by 80% since it was introduced. As the war progressed, the blockade became more firmly put in place. Therefore, its impact became greater.
Mar 23, 2011 · The first and most important point is that the Civil War was expensive. In 1860 the U.S. national debt was $65 million. To put that in perspective, the national debt in 1789, the year George Washington took office, was $77 million.
Mar 18, 2024 · The traditional figure for lives lost in the line of duty during the Civil War comes from an exhaustive 1889 analysis of U.S. Army documents and pension records performed by Union veterans William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore, although this number is imperfect.
Apr 9, 2011 · The North and South took different routes to financing the Civil War. By its end, the U.S. had become the first nation to spend over $1 billion in a year.
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This essay focuses on the three major issues: the economics of slavery that were at the core of the antebellum disputes that led to the crisis of 1860, the economic factors that contributed to the North’s victory in the war, and the economic legacy of America’s most destructive war.
