10/23/2024
"Fight for the Colors" — Art by Don Troiani
Beautiful... now the cost:
When we believe America is exceptional — we are unlike any other nation in history — we don't see our fate as playing out just as it has in any other country that divulged into violent conflict. But we HAVE been there.
In 1860, the Population was approximately 31.5 million (non enslaved) by census:
- 3.9 males between 15 and 30
- Another 1.8 million were between ages 30 and 40, however it's believed that 70% of all combatants were YOUNGER than 23 years old - roughly 2.7 million.
- Approx. 620,000 combatants died (nuanced studied have it closer to 750k btw). That's:
- 2% of the American population at that time.
- 11% of the male population from 15 to 40 years old.
~ 20% of the young men in the generation that paid the highest price for our Civil War.
As many as 2 of every 10 young white Americans may have died in uniform between 1861-1864 — the majority to disease.
Have the implications set in yet?
The current population is 346 million citizens so correlating this to the 31.5 citizens of 1860, we should picture a modern-day death toll:
It would be in the realm of approximated 6,900,000 dead combatants alone.
Oh and there were an estimated 875,000 plus wounded and missing we can add into this study, but let's face it, the numbers become difficult to accept.
THAT is a Civil War.
I'm not going to go into the civilian loss for now, but fair warning, their casualties have grow exponentially due to modern warfare tactics and weapons that preserve combatant lives at the cost of collateral damage — also known as unarmed citizens who cannot escape the path of destruction.
Like it our not, this is a warning we need to grasp before our 'exceptionalism fools us into thinking we can somehow fight a more civilized war in the U.S. than what we see play out around the world.
