The Average Civil War Soldier

Excerpted from The Library of Congress and Historynet.com   The average Civil War soldier was 26 years old, weighing 143 pounds and standing 5'8" tall. (Library of Congress) According to historian Bell I. Wiley, who pioneered the study of the Civil War common soldier, the average Yank or Reb was a ‘white, native-born, farmer, protestant, single, between 18 and 29.’ He stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed about 143 pounds. Most soldiers were between the ages of 18 and 39 with an average age just under 26. The majority of soldiers North and South had been farmers before the war. Union rosters contained references to...

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Retreat of the Confederate Wounded from Gettysburg

  On July 4th, after the battle had ended, a wagon train carried the wounded Confederate soldiers away from Gettysburg. They passed by the Snyder farm in New Franklin, Pennsylvania. Milton J. Snyder remembered:   "On Saturday evening, July 4th, 1863, while we were quietly seated inside the house, my father heard a peculiar noise--like the approach of a heavy storm. This was, if I remember correctly, about ten o'clock on Saturday night.   "Father went out into the darkness to listen. A short time after a body of Confederate cavalry came down the road from Greenwood. They halted in front of my father's house and called...

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The Casualties at Gettysburg

THE CASUALTIES AT GETTYSBURG Excerpted from Militaryhistoryonline.com   Many different estimates exist on the number of casualties inflicted during the battle of Gettysburg, but one common estimate is as follows: Casualties**  KilledWoundedMissingTotal% of Total Union3,15514,5305,36523,04027% Confederate2,600-4,50012,8005,25020,650-25,000*30%-34% * Total Confederate casualties have been estimated to be as great as 28,000. It is usually agreed that total Confederate casualties numbered at least 1/3 of Lee's army.** Casualties generally included anyone who deserted, was captured, missing, wounded, or killed. In essence,...

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Civil War Dead: The Gettysburg Casualties

From TotalGettysburg.com   One must look hard at Civil War casualties to get the full realization of the devastating loss of human life over the course of the 4-year conflict. There were over 1,000,000. casualties (dead, wounded, missing) on both sides and this represented 8% of the population at the time.   Of the 620,000 men who perished in the war, more than two-thirds were by disease. The number of Civil War dead amounted to more American deaths than in all other American conflicts combined. Roughly 8% of the white population aged 13-43 died in the war.   The Gettysburg casualties were nothing short of catastrophic...

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Aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg

From Gettysburg Foundation   Throughout July 2 and July 3, the Confederate army occupied buildings in the town. During the battle, virtually every building in downtown Gettysburg became field hospitals, as doctors and surgeons struggled to treat thousands of Union and Confederate wounded at Gettysburg   While the Battle of Gettysburg lasted three days, a second battle at Gettysburg began on July 4, 1863. The conflict that followed was the dilemma of what to do with the scores of dead soldiers and horses that littered the battlefield. Roughly 21,000 men from the two armies lay wounded at Gettysburg. The...

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Burying the Dead at Gettysburg

From Gettysburg Foundation   Roughly 7,000 men died on the battlefield at Gettysburg in three days of fighting — almost three times the population of the town (2,400). Bodies lay over 25 square miles of ground. The townspeople of Gettysburg had never seen death on that scale. The overwhelming task of burying the dead began. At first, soldiers were buried on the battlefield, but these gravesites were only temporary.   Thousands of families traveled to Gettysburg, searching the temporary graves, to claim the bodies of their loved ones. The citizens of Gettysburg wanted a proper resting place for fallen Union soldiers and with...

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Feigned Diseases

By J. Theodore Calhoun, Assistant Surgeon in the United States Army, And Surgeon in Chief, 2d Division, 3d Army Corps It may seem strange that in an army of volunteers - an army from the people and of the people - men should go to such extremities and use such means and be so persistent in their efforts at deception, and it is strange, yet not difficult to be accounted for. There is generally in every regiment some old soldier who knows the tricks, and perhaps teaches them to his comrades more for the fun of the thing or to show that he is "posted," than any thing else, and once started in a regiment it is sure to spread. All medical men...

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The Supply Situation at Gettysburg Improves

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein   Many Gettysburg civilians did what they could to nurse and feed the patients, but their own supplies were low because of Confederate raiding a few days before the battle.   With the reopening of the railroad on July 6, the supply situation improved dramatically. Trains also took those patients able to be moved to Baltimore for transfer to other hospitals.   As the crisis passed, the medical department established a consolidated hospital on the George Wolf farm about one and a half miles east of Gettysburg. Camp Letterman, as it was called, had at least 400 hospital tents arranged in neat...

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Gettysburg: The Army of the Potomac's Medical Staff Arrives

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.   Most of the medical personnel, as well as a large part of the army, arrived after the fighting had already started, thus they had no time to make preparations. The flood of wounded started while the meager supplies were still being unpacked. No tents were available for field hospitals, so both sides commandeered homes, churches, barns, the railroad station, and even covered bridges for this purpose. Each evening after the fighting subsided, stretcher bearers and ambulances collected the wounded; each morning, before the fighting began at dawn, all the wounded (both Union and Confederate) within Union...

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The Wounded Left at Gettysburg

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.   [Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, Major Jonathan] Letterman calculated that 14,193 wounded were collected and cared for during the battle. In addition, he reported that 6,802 Confederates "fell into our hands" after the battle. These men were among the most seriously wounded, and had been left behind, too ill to be transported, when the Confederate army retreated across the Potomac. Many Confederate surgeons stayed behind to help care for them.   With nearly 21,000 wounded soldiers to treat, the surgeons working in Union medical facilities at Gettysburg labored day and night, completely...

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