![]() ![]() The origins of the American Civil War lay in the outcome of another war fought 15 years earlier: the Mexican-American War. ![]() Why did Americans fight each other with a ferocity unmatched in the Western world during the century between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of World War I in 1914? ![]() More Americans were killed in action that September day near Sharpsburg, Maryland, than died in combat in all the other wars fought by the United States in the 19th century combined. The number of casualties suffered in a single day at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, was four times the number of Americans killed and wounded at the Normandy beaches on D day, June 6, 1944. If the same percentage of Americans were to be killed in a war fought today, the number of American war dead would exceed 6 million. It was also the most traumatic experience endured by any generation of Americans.Īt least 620,000 soldiers lost their lives in the war, 2 percent of the American population in 1861. The Civil War had a greater impact on American society and the polity than any other event in the country’s history. An 1870 engraving of the Battle of Gettysburg, possibly Pickett s charge. ![]()
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