Civil War Casualties

Although the American Civil War lasted only a little over four years, it remains the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.

During the Civil War, 625,000 casualties were recorded. There were nearly 600 deaths for every day the war raged. To put this in perspective, almost 2% of the population of the United States, which was 31,443,321 according to the 1860 census, perished as casualties of the Civil War.

In comparison, there were 405,399 American military casualties during the U.S. involvement in World War II between 1941-1945, casualties that occurred on battlefields around the world. There were 58,151 American military casualties during the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1964-1973. During the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783, there were 25,000 American casualties.

Although the North lost more men during the Civil War than did the South, the loss was more profound for the South. While the North lost approximately 364,500 men during the war, this was out of a total population of 22,000,000. The South, on the other hand, lost 260,000 men from a total population of 9,000,000; however, of this 9,000,000 people living in the South, only 5,500,000 of these were not slaves. Contrast this with the 21,567,414 free persons in the North during the Civil War era, and the devastating effect of the war casualties on the South is even clearer.

The casualties of the Civil War are commemorated on battlefields and military cemeteries throughout the nation. The best known cemetery is Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington D.C., and is famous as much for its origin as for its existence as a military cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery sits on what was, during the Civil War era, the grounds of Arlington House, the family estate of General Robert E. Lee’s wife Mary Anna Custis Lee.

During the 1864, as casualties mounted in Washington D.C. hospitals and overflowed local burial grounds, Federal Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs suggested that 200 acres of the Lee estate at Arlington be seized for use as a cemetery, stating that “the grounds about the mansion are admirably adapted to such a use.” The suitability of the grounds were not the only reason, however, that Arlington was seized for a cemetery; Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate and United States Army officer, was seen by many in the Federal army as a traitor.

Arlington was seized by the federal government in 1864 when property taxes levied against the estate were not paid in person by Mary Anna Lee. The land was then sold at auction, strangely enough, to the Federal government. Meigs and company had begun burying Civil War dead at Arlington before the seizure of the property was finalized, and by the close of the war, there were 16,000 graves at Arlington, many close to the house.

When the war was through, Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee’s son and heir, sued the Federal government, claiming ownership of Arlington. The Supreme Court, ruling in Lee’s favor, ordered Congress to pay him $150,000 for the deed to Arlington.

Close to 300,000 people are now buried at Arlington, including Quartermaster Meigs, fittingly enough, Glenn Miller, Audie Murphy, Robert Todd Lincoln, and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Of the Civil War casualties buried at Arlington, most are Union soldiers.