Civil War Week

My all-time favorite joke is this one I heard Red Skelton tell on his television show 50 years ago:

A spaceship from Mars lands on earth. Two Martians get out, look around, and start walking up the street. They see a parking meter, and one Martian turns to the other and says, "Do you have change for a hern?"

Maybe it's an acquired taste. I think it is hilarious, but then I am weird. I like weird movies, too, really quirky ones like Harold And Maude and Big Fish and Raising Arizona, and I like weird television series like Twin Peaks and Six Feet Under and Northern Exposure..

Younger readers, if there are any, have no idea what I'm talking about. Suffice it to say that I told you I am weird.

I have dubbed this week Civil War Week because (a) 164 years ago today on April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina; (b) 160 years ago this past Wednesday on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Appomattox, Virginia, bringing an end to the Civil War; and (c) also 160 years ago this week, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.

In between were famous battles and sieges with names like Manassas (Bull Run), Vickburg, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Atlanta, and on and on. Over 698,000 Americans lost their lives at a time when the nation's population was 31,443,321 according to the census of 1860. Some modern research concludes that a more accurate estimate is closer to 750,000 with a range from 650,000 to 850,000. According to the National Park Service, there were 642,427 Union casualties, including 110,100 killed in battle and 224,580 deaths from diseases like dysentery and typhoid, and that there were 483,026 Confederate casualties with 94,000 killed in battle and 164,000 deaths from disease. Whatever the actual numbers were, around 2% of the total U.S. population at the time perished in the Civil War.

By contrast, the U.S. casualty figures for World War II are 416,800 military personnel killed and 671,278 wounded. More than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War II. Since the U.S. population in 1940 was 132,164,569 the deaths of Americans in World War II represented 0.003% of the nation.

World War II casualties in the United Kingdom were 383,600 military deaths and 450,700 civilian deaths according to one chart. Germany's figures are staggering, 5,533,000 military deaths and 6,600,000 to 8,800,000 civilian deaths. A very large proportion of the civilian deaths were victims of the Holocaust carried out by the leaders of the Nazi regime. In the Pacific, Japan's figures are 2,120,000 military deaths and 2,600,000 to 3,100,000 civilian deaths, of which several hundred thousand perished when the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Yokohama and Nagasaki.

As General William Tecumseh Sherman once said, "War is hell."

I love the old spiritual song that goes, "I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside, ain't gonna study war no more."