Methodology.

This is coolbert:

"Gettysburg and Waterloo were almost equivalent battles, with 

each of the four combatant armies suffering about 23,000 casualties"

American historian using unique and advanced methodology able to calculate more precisely the number of military dead combined from the North and South during the American Civil War. About 20 % more dead [from all sources] that had been previously estimated! Thanks to the New York Times newspaper!

"New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll"

"For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history."

"But new research shows that the numbers were far too low."

"By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000."

That population of the United States in 1861 about 40 million persons, northern and southern states total. That three-quarters of a million dead soldiers combined from both sides, men exclusively, from the most youthful, robust and energetic demographic, especially so from those southern states in rebellion, disease and not battlefield death constituting the largest portion of the casualties - - as mentioned farm boys in particular more susceptible to fatality from illness and sickness than city dwellers!!

Historical interpretations of events now much more better understood through the use of statistical methods, a careful gleaning of existing records and computer manipulation techniques hitherto unavailable to researchers from previous periods.

Let me too put that three-quarters of a million dead in the proper context. During the Second World War American deaths military all services in all areas of operation totaled about four hundred thousand [400,000], almost no civilians killed. That from a population in 1940 of around one hundred forty million [140 million persons]!

coolbert.