Census data analysis shows the South had a much higher mortality rate than the North in the US Civil War

A small team of social scientists at New York University-Abu Dhabi has conducted what they describe as a more accurate assessment of the number of soldiers killed in the U.S. Civil War. In their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group used census data to more accurately count the war dead, and found that the South had a much higher mortality rate.

For many years, historians have relied on a rough estimate of war dead from the U.S. Civil War. Because records for such deaths in the South were inaccurate, historians counted war deaths in the North and simply doubled them, assuming that both sides lost approximately equal numbers of soldiers. That gave them a grand total of 618,000 soldiers killed in total.

Ten years ago, J. David Hacker challenged this number and suggested his method of counting showed total deaths were approximately 750,000. In this new effort, the research team has taken a more practical approach to arriving at the true number—counting the number of people missing from the census after the war was over.

The researchers analyzed data from all censuses conducted over the years 1850 to 1880, allowing them to track population changes before and after the war. They focused their attention on males of fighting age and found a massive drop-off after the war—496,332 men were missing. They then adjusted that number to account for men not counted, such as Black men and those who were not citizens. They then added war dead from the North to arrive at a total of 698,000 deaths in the war.

The researchers note that they used statistical techniques to account for men who moved from the North to the South or vice-versa after the war. The study found that it was much more dangerous to be a southern soldier—the South had a mortality rate of 13.1% compared to just 4.9% for the North. They also noted that mortality rates varied dramatically by state in the South—Louisiana, for example, had a rate of 19%.

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