Civil War News
By A couple of very interesting Civil War related items this morning.
First, the Disunion series published one of its more touching and excellent pieces, on the high suicide rates among Confederate soldiers. This is just great.
Second and more important is the revised analysis of Civil War death tolls. I have not read the relevant article yet, but it is widely gaining credence among leading Civil War scholars. J. David Hacker estimates that between 750,000 and 850,000 people died in the war, not the 620,000 previously believed by scholars. Hacker argues that vastly more Confederates died of disease than previously thought, which makes sense on many levels. Previous estimates assumed similar death rates from disease in both the Union and Confederacy, but assumes the highly unlikely fact of equal medical care between the two sides.