What was the greatest cause of death in the civil war ?
Filthy battlefield hospitals, spoiled food, typhus, malaria, cholera, unsanitary camps, and poor training for medical personnel all caused the most deaths in the American Civil War.
What was the number one cause of death during the Civil War ?
D) cholera/ disease It has been estimated that 120,012 men were killed in action during the American Civil War. A further 64,582 died of their wounds. However, the greatest danger facing soldiers during the war was not bullets but disease. It is believed that 186,216 soldiers died of a variety of different illnesses during the conflict. Large numbers of the soldiers came from rural areas and had not been exposed to common diseases such as chicken pox and mumps. Living in unhealthy conditions and often denied properly medical treatment, soldiers sometimes died of the these diseases. For example, 5,177 soldiers in the Union Army died of measles during the war. The main killer diseases were those that resulted from living in unsanitary conditions. Union Army records show that a large number of its soldiers died from diseases caused by contaminated food and water. This included diarrhea (35,127), typhoid (29,336) and dysentery (9,431). Drinking from streams occupied by by dead bodies or human waste and eating uncooked meat were the cause of large numbers of deaths. Regular soldiers who had been trained to be more careful about the food and water they consumed, were far less likely to suffer from intestinal disease that volunteer soldiers. Large numbers of soldiers died from tuberculosis (consumption). Official records show 6,497 soldiers died of the disease in the Union Army. However, a much larger number were discharged because of poor health and died later. It is estimated that smallpox killed 7,058 Union Soldiers. Another 14,379 died of malaria. Although the exact number of Confederate Army deaths from malaria is not known, there were 41,539 cases in an 18 month period (January, 1862-July, 1863) in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The cause of the disease was not known and soldiers often slept without the protection of mosquito nets.
What was the greatest cause of death in the civil war?
Disease The casualty statistics are staggering. According to an analysis of government records, slightly more than 350,000 Union soldiers died from various causes during the Civil War. The majority of deaths were from disease. Nearly 25,000 men died from causes such as suicide, execution, sunstroke, and accidents. The Union navy lost nearly 5,000 men to illness, accidents, and battle injuries. Records of Confederate deaths aren't nearly as comprehensive as those of Union casualties; military and government files were destroyed during and after the war. However, a generally accepted estimate is 150,000 dead of disease and 95,000 killed or mortally wounded in combat. No statistics survive regarding deaths among Confederate naval personnel. To put these figures in perspective, consider that more Americans died of disease and battlefield wounds during the Civil War than all other American wars combined, from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam, including both World Wars. In fact, the Battle of Antietam resulted in four times the casualties as the landings on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Civil War took place shortly before a number of important advances in human medicine. There were no vaccines for the most common of illnesses, and hygiene was poor, especially in mobile military camps. Young men who had lived their entire lives in relative seclusion in small towns and hamlets simply didn't have immunity to many types of illnesses, and they fell sick from the most innocuous of diseases. One of the leading contributors to wartime illness was the latrine, usually a simple hole or trench used by all members of the camp. When the stench of the latrine became unbearable, it was covered over and a new one dug. As might be expected, camp latrines were veritable breeding grounds for every imaginable form of illness. They also attracted a lot of insects, particularly flies, which would deposit germs and bacteria on the food the men ate and the water they drank. Numerous outbreaks of diarrhea and epidemics of cholera and other contagious diseases resulted. Whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, and dysentery also took a huge toll, as did environmental ailments such as sunstroke, frostbite, and tetanus. Many soldiers suffered from gastrointestinal ailments and other complaints for almost the entire length of their enlistment.
Causes of the Civil War?
ummm i need to write an essay and i need some help.I know that slavery and the election of 1860 and the econmic standards..but can explain more into the causes please..thank you!.....who EVER has the best answer first will be voted best answer...!!!!
The single greatest cause of death of Confederate and Union soldiers?
This is a question on my homework that I can't find in my book or on the internet. Thanks for the help. The single greatest cause of death of Confederate and Union soldiers was: a. canisters b. shells c. disease d. gunboats
What was the single greatest cause of death of confederate and union soldiers in the civil war?
Union Battle deaths: 110,070 Disease, etc.: 250,152 Total 360,222 Confederate Battle deaths: 94,000 Disease, etc.: 164,000 Total 258,000
What accounted for the very high death toll in the US Civil War, given that weapons were somewhat basic?
Something more than half of all deaths in the military during the Civil War were from disease. This was the common trend up until WWI, or possibly WWII where battlefield deaths finally beat out disease deaths. A major cause of disease was the crowding together of large groups of men living in what we would find today as squalid conditions. With no knowledge of the germ theory of disease, very limited ways to combat disease at the time and all the other limitations of the time disease deaths were bound to be very high.While the weapons seem basic today they were state of the art in the 1860s. Muskets, which was about all they had had in previous wars, had been largely replaced by rifled weapons. This gave a much longer and more accurate range of fire. Accurate rifle fire went from 100ish yards in the Mexican War to 4–500 yards in 1860. The same (making the yardage longer) can be said for cannons.For a number of reasons tactics couldn’t change as quickly.First off most of the officers (and the higher up you went the more pronounced this became) had learned their command skills before the new weapons were introduced. The ability to do something reasonably well is hard to learn and once learned it is difficult to throw it over and try something new and untested.Second, and I think more importantly, communications on the battlefield was limited and slow. The only way to keep control was to keep the troops in close contact. The larger the group the harder it was to move them in any coordinated fashion. A case could be made for communications being limited to how far a commander of units under 5–600 men could yell.Third, logistics. How do you move tens of thousands of men and their million tons of supplies rapidly. True the railroads played a key role in this but in the end they have to get off the train and walk. The closer you can keep an army together the more quickly you can respond to opportunities and threats.Fourth, there were few other options other than mass the men together and charge.
Which war resulted in the greatest number of American deaths?
Total deaths- The US Civil War. Figuring losses is guess work. That was because the record keeping was so bad by 20th Century standards. Estimates start at around 500,000 and go up to around 750,000 counting civilians. Next closest was WW2 at about 450,000.Now if you count just military casualties then it's WW2. But put it in perspective.The population of the US was about 33 million in 1861. The population in 1941 was 133 million. Don't forget the populations of Oregon, Nevada, and California, were, for the most part, not involved in the war. Now add in the fact that a large part of the nation was laid waste. In WW2 the US was mostly untouched. Finally unlike WW2, Regiments were typically recruited and mustered from a specific locality. A small town might send one regiment, in other words, of all the local 15-24 year old men to war. If that one regiment got themselves in a tight spot, all the young men in the town could be killed. Now if it was a Confederate Regiment from say, a town in Georgia, all the young men would be killed and then the town burned by the Federal Armies.
What were the main causes of death in WWI?
It was probably the first war in history in which more men were killed in battle than by disease. This was due to medical advances, not impotent weapons.Death in battle or from disease weren’t the only scourges. The populations and colonies of the various combatants had to supply and feed their huge armies. Horses that should have been plowing fields were pulling guns. Nitrates that otherwise would have been made into fertilizer were turned into explosives or propellants. Railroads and merchant ships were commandeered to support the war effort. Anything coming from overseas was likely to be torpedoed by somebody’s submarine. The German people were near starvation by the end of the war (they referred to winter 17–18 as the “Turnipwinter” because there was nothing else to eat. The British rationed their food (due to the successful U-boat blockade) to the extent that the people were near malnutrition, which is saying something since the British working classes were notoriously underfed (something like two fifths of the draftees were rejected for health reasons). Imagine what it was like in places like Lebanon, where 200,000 people starved to death during a famine in 1915–18. Both Germany and Austria-Hungary were on the verge of public uprising when the war ended. The Russian revolution had its origins in food riots.