The Math of the Dead

No one was more shocked by the casualty figures than President Joe Wheeler. He had claimed a Confederate victory on the battlefields in both Tennessee and Maryland but, this was a public face. Inside his Presidential Mansion in Richmond he saw the gathering clouds for his nation. He had a unique problem to deal with that no other industrialized western nation did. A large segment of the Confederate population were not even citizens but, considered residents. Many of those were still slaves and very few of them, save the sailors of the “Great Black Fleet” were involved in the war. 

The casualty figures from Tennessee alone were staggering. While it is estimated that over 72,000 US troops became casualties of one kind or another, during the active phase of the offensive, Confederate casualties were not as high but not only slightly less. The figures pouring in, at the time, listed nearly 54,000 who had been killed, wounded, or captured. Statistics compiled after the war showed that these figures were conservative estimates. Of course, there has been a great debate about the actual number but it is clear that Confederate casualties were closer to 60,000 and that is not counting numbers from other fronts. As fall approached, Wheeler had to consider that Confederate casualties, total, had effectively wiped out the white male population of a city the size of New Orleans or Atlanta.

The numbers only demonstrated a small part of the problem. The black population had been steadily increasing since the American 61. In some states of the Confederacy, such as South Carolina, the black population had long since grown to outnumber that of whites. If the war continued much longer it was very probable that the suppressed classes of the Confederacy would outnumber those of their masters, in all States. Such math was the formula of revolutions and it was one greatly feared in the Confederacy, even if it was seldom spoke of in public.

There was also another factor and it was one that was shared by all nations and not just the Confederacy. The numbers of men who died were not nearly as important as who those men were. The men who had marched off to war, first, tended to be those who held the highest civic virtues in their given communities. These were the men who held everything together. They were the ones who were the most patriotic, usually the best educated, and normally the fairest to those around them. Their loss would be sorely missed and ultimately would turn life on the home front upside down. Even if the belligerent nations were to claim victory it would be too late for days gone by. The world was changing by killing off the people who made it what it was. Nothing would ever be the same again and the Victorian Age would die just before she did.