Counting the dead

"Dead Confederate Soldiers in 'The Devil's Den'," loc.gov

 Reviewed article: J. David Hacker. "A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead." Civil War History 57, no. 4 (December 2011): 307-348.

"Why are there historians?" "Hasn't everything in the past been written about?" These are questions I always feel like I need to be prepared to answer as a public historian. There are historians because it is always important to remember where we came from. In addition, interpretations and methodologies change; new sources may come to light. Part of passing along our past is visually and orally, through our national parks and museums.

J. David Hacker, a professor at Binghamton University, SUNY, made answering these questions a lot easier. His article “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead” was published in Civil War History last December. It took longer than I planned to get a hold of it and read it, but it was well worth the wait. Hacker uses quantitative methodology to argue that the traditional estimate of Civil War dead was likely underestimated by about twenty percent. The original count of 620,000 was calculated in the 1880s and Hacker adeptly demonstrates why the figure was wrong—low numbers of deaths in muster out rolls, destroyed or lost records, and faulty assumptions (i.e. that Union and Confederate soldiers were equally susceptible to disease. The truth is that Confederates didn’t have a built up immunity because they lived in rural, rather than urban areas, nor did they have medical care equal to the Union troops.).

The author uses a two-census approach to estimate the war dead: “If a population was fully and accurately counted in two censuses separated by a span of years and experience negligible in- and out-migration between the two censuses, then changes in the size of birth cohorts (defined by age group) can be assumed to be due to mortality” (318). In other words, he looks at men aged 20-29 in one census and looks at how that portion of the population changed ten years later. This requires calculating what the mortality rate would be if there was no war in the 1860s. Hacker estimated the normal mortality rate by averaging the death rate in the 1850s and 1870s—the decades surrounding the Civil War. “Excess deaths” among white men of military age could then be attributed to the Civil War.

While this method is not perfect, it is important to note that there is no way to know the exact count of Civil War dead. Even the 620,000 number was an estimate. There are, however, better ways to get an accurate count. The census-based method does require some assumptions. A few of them are:

1. The U.S. was closed to migration—the arrival or departure of citizens has virtually no impact.
2. Hacker worked primarily with statistics for native-born white men of military age, but worked with the idea that foreign-born men had the same level of excess mortality.
3. The census is traditionally undercounted, especially in the nineteenth century. The net undercount was between 3.7% and 6.9%, with a preferred undercount of 6%.
4. The War Department’s estimate on the death of 36,000 African American soldiers is correct.
5. Excess male mortality is exclusively a result of the Civil War.

Taking these assumptions into account, Hacker states that the range of Civil War deaths was between 650,000 and 850,000 (depending on the undercount). Using the preferred undercount of 6%, the tally comes to 750,000. Hacker included not only soldier deaths, but the 50,000 civilians (including 9,000 Southern women) and those who died between 1865 and the 1870 census of war-related causes. The author concludes that while the census method is not perfect, it is the preferable method in calculating Civil War dead. Though I’m not a statistician and don’t have the demographic knowledge that Hacker demonstrates, the assumptions are reasonable and the conclusions are reasonable. Historians have known for years that 620,000 was likely a low count of war dead.

So, what does all of this mean? As Hacker concluded, “The human cost of the Civil War was greater than historians have long believed” (348). To put that in context, the great James McPherson wrote in the article’s preface, “The figure of 750,000 soldier deaths would translate into 7.5 million American deaths in a war fought in our own time by the United States, with its tenfold greater population than during the Civil War” (310). This could change the way that we look at post-Civil War society—mourning and memorial practices, the South’s coping with defeat, Reconstruction policies, and more.

As far as the antebellum period (the area of my current research), I see some level of impact. There was no way for nineteenth century politicians to know what the cost of war would be. A number of figures predicted that only war could solve the issues dividing North and South (primarily slavery and its place in the territories). Abolitionist John Brown’s final words indicated as much: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood." Did Brown know how bloody a civil war would be? Did the Fire-Eaters know how much economically, demographically, and personally war would cost when they pushed for secession? They might have known they had to sacrifice some, but I don’t think anyone knew that one in ten white men of military age (North and South) would not return home. They didn’t know that there would be 200,000 war widows. After Fort Sumter in 1861, very few expected a long war. Most believed there would be one battle and then it would be over. Hacker’s research is a grim reminder of the consequences of prewar political failures.