Contemplating the War's Ultimate Cost

Incessant Northern slavery agitation, encouragement of slave insurrection, and Northern nullification of federal law caused the secession of many Southern States in early 1861. The war itself was caused by Lincoln’s military coercion of South Carolina, a power his predecessor asserted a president did not possess. Lincoln blockaded North Carolina’s coast on April 27, 1861 -- a State with strong Union sympathy – an act which facilitated the secession of The Old North State.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"


“The war cost the life of one soldier, Rebel or Yankee, for every six slaves freed and for every ten white Southerners saved for the union. (Potter, 261). The money spent to field the two armies would have purchased the liberty of the four million slaves five times over.”
(Tombee, Portrait of a Cotton Planter, Theodore Rosengarten, Morrow & Company, 1986, page 212.)

“The direct financial cost of the operation of the American (War Between the States) was about $8,000,000,000, which, with destruction of property, derangement of the power of labor, pension system and other economic losses, is increased until the total reached thirty billions of dollars.”
(The Awful Cost of War, Confederate Veteran Magazine, page 389.)

“Lincoln’s war ended up costing 620,000 battlefield deaths along with the death of some 50,000 Southern civilians, including thousands of slaves who perished in the federal bombardment of Southern cities and because of the devastation of the Southern economy. By 1865, the Lincoln government had killed one out of every four Southern white males between the ages of twenty and forty.”
(The Culture of Death, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, 2001.)

“The number of Confederate soldiers in Northern prisons, 220,000; the number of Northern soldiers in Southern prisons, 270,000. The death rate in Northern prisons was 12%, in Southern prisons it was less than 9%. These prison statistics are taken from the report of Secretary Stanton made July 19, 1866, and corroborated by the report of Surgeon-General Barnes the following June.”
Confederate Veteran Magazine, November 1897, page 561.

“…2,326,168 men of the North and 750,000 Southerners took part in the struggle. Of these, according to Fox’s estimates in the Photographic History, Vol. X, the North lost 259,000 men killed in the field and died of wounds and disease; and the South lost 135,000 all told. In this stupendous conflict, therefore, the loss aggregated nearly half a million lives lost and ruined in the armies, and even a greater number of Negro lives caused by neglect, disease and starvation, making a total of upwards of a million human lives. Not only this, but the women and children….suffered miseries. Then at the South there was a desolation of ruin and poverty estimated in the long run at twenty billions of dollars.”
(A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States, Captain S.A. Ashe, 1935, page 64.)

Contemplating the War's Ultimate Cost