Why was the death toll during the Civil War so large?

Answer 1

There were big Armies involved. Medicine was incredibly primitive. Firepower had just spiked with the invention of the gatling gun, while military tactics had not adjusted for it. Plus - people were real serious. It wasn't a game.

Answer 2

Rifles are a big reason also accurate artillery fire. Although some units used muskets most in both armies used rifles, which were accurate to hundreds of yards. The tactics employed were based on those used by Napolean which were developed for infantry armed with smooth bore muskets. Which were only effective at less than 100 yards.

The rifles were large caliber and fired heavy soft lead bullets which traveled slow compared to todays standards. These bullets tend to flatten out when they hit something solid like bone. If you were hit in a major bone it would shatter, because of the state of medical technology the only chance of saving your life would be amputation. Even then due to the conditions it was likely you would die of infection.

Typical examples of where the tactics were wrong for the weapons. Are the battle of Fredricksburg, and Gettisburg where troops made frontal assaults against defenders firing from prepared positions, and were mowed down by the thousands. There are examples of this throughout the war, including the battle of Nashville, and Grants campaigns in Vicksburg and the east.

At Vicksburg Grant launched assault after assault up terrain so steep men had to crawl on their hands and knees. Attacking defenders firing from trenches.

The bottomline is that with the new weapons frontal assaults against troops in prepared positions almost always failed. The trench warefare of WWI was just a continuation of what had occured during the civil war on a smaller scale.

Answer 3

The Civil War was pretty much the first modern war, complete with Gatling guns and other nasty weapons. The battlefield tactics hadn't adapted to dealing with these kinds of weapons. Still acting as if they were fighting with muskets, battlefield casualties were quite high. When you factor into the equation that civil wars are nearly the nastiest kind (possibly except for wars of religion), the death toll rises.

Actually, the worst factor was not military action, but disease. A majority of fatalities were a result of poor medical attention available to both armies. Add into this that nutrition was poor due to often low supplies, it becomes very deadly to be a soldier in that conflict.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

The death toll was so high (600,000 from the two sides combined) due to several factors. The accuracy of the weapons had improved greatly over weapons produced just a decade earlier (rifled barrels for longer range repeating rifles for more rapid fire and early versions of machine guns). This increased the lethality on the battlefield because tactics were those used by Napoleon 50 years earlier which emphasized massing of troops. This only made a big stationary target which led to high casualties. Finally, the medical corps was completely incapable of handling the situation which it was thrust into. Wounded limbs were routine amputated in conditions which led to infection and death far too often.

Answer 5

Reason 1:
More people died from disease than about anything else and when people were wounded, they just cut off limbs or whatever. there was no sanitation.
People drank from rivers that weren't clean.
Food was scarce and soldiers mainy ate coffee and a very dry, hard bread/cracker which often got worms in it.

Reason 2:
This was a time when traditional battle techniques were being changed. Most weapons that were used were not made for the kind of battles that were preformed during the Civil War.

Reason 3:
There were a lot of people that felt strongly about the causes and it was fought right at home. A lot of people fighting for a long period of time with draining money and resources for the troops. People had to steal food.

Answer 6

The idea of standing in formation and holding lies on an open field were still standard practice during the Civil War. In addition field surgery was in it's relative infancy, as were considerations for hygiene. For example the first know Civil War disease was gum infections and rot due to a lack of fiber and vegetables in the common diet of hard tack! Also the standard caliber bullet was about 58 which is quite large!

Answer 7

There are so many reasons. First of all, the weapons were primitive by our standards and fired very large inaccurate projectiles. Unlike modern warfare, the enemy wasn't generally warned by radio broadcast or air-dropped leaflets that they were about to be attacked. Two armies would line up on either side of a wide field or street and just start shooting at each other. This would continue until one side gave up or was all dead.

Once you were hit with one of these projectiles in an arm or leg, odds were it was coming off. You were left to the hands of an often on the job trained combat surgeon, not a trained medical doctor. Combat surgeons might have been actual doctors, but were almost as likely to be barbers, veterinarians, butchers or hastily trained soldiers pulled from the ranks, handed a saw and told to get going. Their only method of repairing an injured limb was to cut it off. They lacked sufficient antiseptic, sterilization procedures and often anesthesia. After the battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri, the pile of severed limbs outside the home/hospital of the Ray family reached as high as the roof. Blood from the surgeries being performed in the home ran through the planks in the floor and onto the Ray children hiding in the basement. Imagine hiding in your basement while you hear the screams of the injured and dying upstairs and their blood drips through the floor. Ick!

If the shock, blood loss and sheer terror of watching your own arm or leg get sawed off wasn't enough to kill you, you would most likely develop an infection in the severed limb and die. A chest or stomach wound? Forget about it! You were a GONER! More soldiers died of infection and disease than of injuries alone. Very contagious and deadly diseases like influenza, typhoid and dysentery were very common and very capable of wiping out entire platoons in a matter of days.
It was a bloody horrible war - just like any other.

Answer 8

The weapons and the way the men were positioned. Example: Union soldier fires over to the Confederates, aiming at man A. He may miss man A, but since they are lined up shoulder to shoulder, the Union soldier who fired will still hit someone because they are all close together. Same applied the other way with the South shooting at the North. Also, the way I see it, if you were shot, half the time you were as good as dead because medical care was so poor. I could go into some pretty grim & nasty details on that, but I won't!

Answer 9

Which civil war. I live in Ireland and am aware of many civil wars. If your talking about America and i know you are then probably coz the weapons were unreliable and the battlefield tactics were still gentlemanly-standing in front of one another shooting-a trend that had yet to catch up with the deadliness of the weapons and would continue til WW1 when we figured out that standing in front of a gun was stoooopid!

Answer 10

They used outdated Napoleonic tactics which were designed for warfare with inaccurate muskets. Despite what you've heard, rifles in the Civil War were decently accurate, thus the high casualties. Plus medical science was practically nonexistent.

(And so you know, I wrote my answer before I saw the guy's answer right above me.)