Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T12:48:58.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Selective Assignment of Military Positions in the Union Army: Implications for the Impact of the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Chulhee Lee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Civil War was the bloodiest event in American history. For every 10,000 persons, 182 died during the war. Wartime mortality was especially severe for young men; about 8% of all white males between the ages 13 and 43 died (Vinovskis 1990). Among those who survived the war, many were disabled due to wartime injuries. According to the estimate of Claudia Goldin and Frank Lewis (1975), human losses account for 37% and 28% of the direct costs of the Civil War for the North and the South, respectively.

A question of perennial interest to social historians is the degree to which mortality during the war varied across economic classes (Murdock 1964; Hess 1981; Lavine 1981; Riggs 1982; Rorabaugh 1986; Kemp 1990; Geary 1991). Starkly put, the question reduces to this: Was the Civil War a poor man’s fight? In a recent study, Maris Vinovskis (1990) suggested that the answer to the question is yes. Vinovskis found that recruits from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to die or to be wounded than servicemen who had higher-ranking jobs or greater wealth, presumably because they were more susceptible to disease or were sent on more dangerous missions. However, he didn’t provide evidence of how the socioeconomic backgrounds of recruits affected their susceptibility to disease and military missions. Moreover, since his study was based on a relatively small sample composed of recruits who resided in a single town, it is unclear whether the results could be generalized for Union army recruits at large.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999 , pp. 67 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atack, J., and Bateman, F. (1987) To Their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North. Ames: Iowa State University Press.Google Scholar
Brinkman, H. J., Drunkker, J. W., and Slot, B. (1988) “Height and income: A new method for the Estimation of Historical National Income series.” Explorations in Economic History 25: 227–227.Google Scholar
Chirikos, T N., and Nestel, G. (1985) “Further evidence on the economic effects of poor health.” Review of Economics and Statistics 67: 61–61.Google Scholar
Costa, D. L. (1993a) “Health, weight, wartime stress, and older age mortality: Evidence from Union army records.” Explorations in Economic History 30: 424–424.Google Scholar
Costa, D. L. (1993b) “Height, wealth, and disease among the native-born in the rural, antebellum North.” Social Science History 17: 355–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dent, Owen F., Richardson, B., Wilson, S., Goulston, K., and Murdoch, C. (1989) “Postwar mortality among Australian World War II prisoners of the Japanese.” Medical Journal of Australia 150: 378–378.Google Scholar
Deolaliker, A. B. (1988) “Do health and nutrition influence labor productivity in agriculture?: Econometric estimates for rural India.” Review of Economics and Statistics 70: 406–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (1989) Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (1993) “New sources and new techniques for the study of secular trends in nutritional status, health, mortality, and process of aging.” Historical Methods 26: 5–5.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (1994) “Economic growth, population theory, and physiology: The bearing of long-term processes on the making of economic policy.” American Economic Review 84: 369–369.Google Scholar
Geary, J. W. (1991) We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. D., and Lewis, F. (1975) “The economic cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and implications.” Journal of Economic History 35: 299–299.Google Scholar
Gould, B. A. (1869) Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Griffith, P. (1986) Battle in the Civil War. Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England: Fields-books.Google Scholar
Hearst, N., Newman, T. B., and Hulley, S. B. (1986) “Delayed effects of the military draft on mortality: A randomized natural experiment.” New England Journal of Medicine 314: 620–620.Google Scholar
Heitman, F. B. (1903) Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, vol. 2. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Herscovici, S. (1993) “The distribution of wealth in nineteenth-century Boston: Inequality among natives and immigrants, 1860.” Explorations in Economic History 30: 321–321.Google Scholar
Hess, E. J. (1981) “The 12th Missouri Infantry: A socio-military profile of a Union regiment.” Missouri Historical Review 76: 53–53.Google Scholar
Higgs, R. (1979) “Cycles and trends of mortality in 18 large American cities, 1871-1900.” Explorations in Economic History 10:177–95.Google Scholar
ICPSR (1996) Public Use Tape on the Aging of Veterans of the Union Army: Military, Pension, and Medical Records, Ohio and Pennsylvania Regiments, 1820-1940. Center for Population Economics, University of Chicago, and Department of Economics, Brigham Young University.Google Scholar
Kearl, J. R., and Pope, C. (1986) “Choice, rents, and luck: Economic mobility of nineteenth-century Utah households,” in Engerman, S. L. and Gallman, R. E. (eds.) Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 215–60.Google Scholar
Kemp, T. R. (1990) “Community and war: The Civil War experience of two New Hampshire towns,” in Vinovskis, M. (ed.) Toward a Social History of the American Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press: 31–77.Google Scholar
Kim, J. M. (1996) “The economics of nutrition, body build, and health: Waaler surfaces and physical human capital.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Lavine, P. (1981) “Draft evasion in the North during the Civil War, 1863-1865.” Journal of American History 67: 816–816.Google Scholar
Lee, C. (1997) “Socioeconomic background, disease, and mortality among Union army recruits: Implications for economic and demographic history.” Explorations in Economic History 34: 27–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lund, M., D. Foy, C. Siprelle, and Strachan, A. (1984) “The combat exposure scale: A systematic assessment of trauma in the Vietnam War.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 40:1323–28.Google Scholar
Margo, R. A., and Steckel, R. H. (1982) “The heights of American slaves.” Social Science History 6: 516–516.Google Scholar
Margo, R. A., and Steckel, R. H. (1983) “The heights of native-born whites during the antebellum period.” Journal of Economic History 43: 167–167.Google Scholar
McPherson, J. M. (1988) Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Murdock, E. C. (1964) “Was it a ‘poor man’s fight’?” Civil War History 10: 241–241.Google Scholar
Nefzger, M. D. (1970) “Follow-up studies of World War II and Korean War prisoners, I: Study plan and mortality findings.” American Journal of Epidemiology 91: 123–123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pope, C. L. (1989) “Households on the American frontier: The distribution of income and wealth in Utah, 1850-1900,” in Galenson, D. W. (ed.) Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 148–89.Google Scholar
Riggs, D. F. (1982) “Sailors of the U.S.S. Cairo: Anatomy of a gunboat crew.” Civil War History 28: 266–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorabaugh, W. J. (1986) “Who fought for the North in the Civil War? Concord, Massachusetts, enlistment.” Journal of American History 73: 695–695.Google Scholar
Rosen, S. (1982) “Authority, control, and the distribution of earnings.” Bell Journal of Economics 13: 311–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, F. A. (1928) The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865, vol. 1. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company.Google Scholar
Soltow, L. (1992) “Inequalities in the Standard of Living in the United States, 1798-1875,” in Gallman, R. and Wallis, J. (eds.) American Economic Growth and Standard of Living before the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 121–72.Google Scholar
Steiner, P. E. (1968) Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861-1865. Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas.Google Scholar
Sutker, P., Winstead, D., Galina, Z., and Allan, A. (1991) “Cognitive deficits and psychopathology among former prisoners of war and combat veterans of the Korean conflicts.” American Journal of Psychiatry 148: 67–67.Google Scholar
U.S. Surgeon General’s Office (1870) Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, vol. 1. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Vinovskis, M. A. (1990) “Have social historians lost the Civil War?: Some preliminary demographic speculations,” in Vinovskis, M. (ed.) Toward a Social History of the American Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press: 1–30.Google Scholar
Waaler, H. T. (1984) “Height, weight, and mortality: The Norwegian experience.” Acta Medica Scandinavica [Suppl.] 679:1–56.Google Scholar