Friday, June 26, 2015

On the Fact that (According to Emory University Professor, Donald Livingston) at the End of the Civil War About Half of the White Male Population of Military Age Was Either Dead or Mutilated (and, No, this Doesn't Even Get Into the Loss of Wealth)

Can you even begin to fathom what that would look like today? And I guess that that's what bugs me about this thing; the fact that it's so ridiculously far removed that we've completely lost perspective on it, the human cost especially.

1 comment:

BB-Idaho said...

Of the young that went off to fight the Civil War, one in four did not return . Such were the times that many simply died from disease, others from
wounds that mid-nineteenth medicine could not handle. And a surprising amount,
(probably due to record-keeping in the chaos) were, and are, still 'missing in action'. Hard to imagine that kind of impact on our society today.