re: Today marks the 160th anniversary of the Black Day of the Confederate Army...

I don't support the overarching cause of the South, but man, I have some empathy for those absolute baws that marched barefoot in the snow and repeatedly defeated a bigger and better supplied army. I don't think most of those guys gave a shite about slavery or race, but fought because there was an opposing force that was pressing them.

I feel the same way about the union soldiers, but they didn't face the same level of hardship as the South just getting from point A to B, not to mention the difference in weapons.

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not sure what your point is but where do you think the blacks that are strewn from all of the Caribbean islands to the US came from? that was the slave trade route

conditions are still better here for blacks than anywhere in Africa or the islands

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I think we both don't understand each other's point. No biggie, though. Happy Sunday.

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Joseph Kershaw.

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I carry a Kershaw

The War of Northern Aggression was no joke

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Today marks the 160th anniversary of the Black Day of the Confederate Army...

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Can’t capitalize black unless you talkin bout Tyrone.

Due to shortage of ammo, weaponry, etc, this battle devolved to mass-scale desperate hand-to-hand fighting. Had an ancestor captured.

The fact that MS largest expenditure the year the war ended was artificial legs, and these were not nice robot legs they were basically wooden peg legs, always floored me.

Another stat that hit me was that half of the 122000 Alabamians who served were either seriously wounded or killed. Alabama had a very high rate of men killed, close to 30% who served.

CSA military deaths by state:

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had every logistical advantage geography wise… we’re consider the outdoorsman type fighting against bankers and haberdashers… lost every meaningful battle, didn’t understand how to form supply lines, couldn’t fed their army after the first month…

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had every logistical advantage geography wise… we’re consider the outdoorsman type fighting against bankers and haberdashers… lost every meaningful battle, didn’t understand how to form supply lines, couldn’t fed their army after the first month…

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Great points. I’ll add the confederacy was too big of an area to defend with a much smaller population. Richmond wasn’t the best location to have a capital as well. A lions share of the best trained troops had to be sent to the Old Dominion. Hence why New Orleans fell so early in the war. Good portion of the troops were gone.

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him. It's always amazed me how this country came back together after this horrific war -

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Just ignore that whole Reconstruction thing

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The fact that MS largest expenditure the year the war ended was artificial legs, and these were not nice robot legs they were basically wooden peg legs, always floored me. Another stat that hit me was that half of the 122000 Alabamians who served were either seriously wounded or killed. Alabama had a very high rate of men killed, close to 30% who served. CSA military deaths by state:

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That’s an interesting graph. Looking at it on a deeper level, it’s really a function of two things:
1. Population density at the time
2. How early and thoroughly in the war the Southern state was occupied

Virginia was the most populated, and while much of the Eastern theater fighting took place there, almost all of it until mid-1864 took place between the Potomac and Rapidan or in the very rural Shenandoah; the major population centers were largely untouched until late. North Carolina was also one of the most populous Southern states and didn’t experience much contact with Union armies absent some coastal skirmishes until very late - same can mostly be said for South Carolina. Thus, large draft classes and high casualties.

Florida and to a lesser extent Texas just weren’t that highly populated at the time. Much of Louisiana - which was well-populated - was out of the game pretty early, so large swaths of the male population missed out on the draft years from 1862 onward. Tennessee was also embattled early and all over the state; similarly, they didn’t have as much of their fighting age population drafted (and probably something like a third to forty percent of the state was pro-Union, anyway).

Outside of the Eastern seaboard, Alabama was largely untouched until very late in the war, as was much of Georgia until after Missionary Ridge. Alabama units in particular seemed to consistently find themselves at the tip of the spear on a number of occasions in key battles (like Little Round Top, Shiloh, pretty much every major battle in the Chattanooga to Atlanta sequence, Murfreesboro, etc).