The Civil War was by far the deadliest of all American conflicts.
In 1860, the population of the United States (whites, blacks, and “other”) was over 31 million. In the war that followed, some 620,000 soldiers, about 2 percent of the population, lost their lives in combat or more frequently to disease. Hundreds of thousands of others returned home missing a limb, crippled, or emotionally and mentally scarred.
