The Civil War

Hist 136

Tuesday 1:30

4/5/2005

Paper #2

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars of all time, and it was fought by people of the same country. It is amazing to think that such a thing could have happened to this country. About 260,000 rebel soldiers and 373,000 Union soldiers were killed (Text, pg. 378). The reason for such a high number of deaths is mainly because most battles of the war involved about 200,000 soldiers. With this many people fighting at once, there are bound to be a huge number of deaths. Another factor to the high death count is the fact that newer and better weapons were being developed. The new technology allowed guns to be more accurate and even more deadly. This, combined with the lack of medical attention, made it more likely that you would die in battle, than survive. Many soldiers could not make it to medics in time, and even when they got there, many of the medics were not sufficiently trained. This is sad to see, but they needed all the "doctors" they could get.

According to Alger, Cahan, and Gold, success usually was trading rags for respectability, not for great wealth (Text, pg. 472). Most of Alger's stories tended to be glorified. Not many people really did make it the way that Alger's characters did. Cahan gives a more realistic tale of this rag to riches theory by showing the