Reply #96: No group of Americans ever fought harder, under worse conditions [View All]

[Yupster]

and suffered such heavy losses as the Confederates during the Civil War.

At the outset of the war, there were an estimated 1 million physically fit adult white men in the Confederacy capable of bearing arms.

750,000 of them or 75 % of them fought for the Confederacy. No group of Americans ever came close to such a unified war effort. At the end of the war, 250,000 of those men (25%) were dead and another 250,000 (25 %) were sereiously wounded. Again, America never saw anything like those kinds of losses before or since.

The regiments were formed by counties and towns. The whole county marched off together, elected its leaders (usually the mayor or pastor) and when a regiment was destroyed in a charge, it could be 3/4 of all the men of a rural county that were lost.

These men were Democrats and Whigs, slaveowners and not, secessionists and anti-secessionists, all fighting together to stop an invasion of their homes. Rightly or wrongly they felt their states had every legal right to secede. They fought until they had nothing left to fight with, fought for a cause they thought worthy, and still they couldn't stop an invading army from destroying their fields, burning their crops, shooting their livestock, digging up and stealing their valuables and tearing up their railroads.

And people have a question why they were bitter?

Perhaps if there was some sort of a Marshall Plan? Perhaps if Lincoln had lived? Who knows.