• ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    You probably guessed as much, but this just straight up isn't true. Going by the National Park Service's numbers:

    The 642,427 total Union casualties have been divided accordingly:

    110,100 killed in battle
    224,580 diseases
    275,174 wounded in action
    30,192 prisoners of war

    The 483,026 total Confederate casualties have been divided accordingly:

    94,000 killed in battle
    164,000 diseases
    194,026 wounded in action
    31,000 prisoners of war

    Both sides suffering 2/3s of their total deaths from disease :yea:

    So the Union lost about 10% more in battle and suffered about 30% more wounded, which is fairly typical as they were on the offensive for most of the war which favors the defender. The Union also lost more troops to disease, which is also expected given that they recruited far more men to the army, but if you do the math you'll find that a given individual was more likely to die of disease in the Confederate army.

    tl;dr: don't learn history from memes.