War Deaths
 
From: tmanning1@triad.rr.com
 
Dear SHNV Friends,
 
I always appreciate your perspectives and thought I would add just a little to those who persist in referring the total war deaths experienced during the War to Prevent Southern independence as being "600,000". The actual figure is closer to 2 & 1/2 million to 3,000,000.  Due to the destruction of so many city halls and county records Southern heritage organizations hardly know where to start in giving some recognition to those civilians who innocently suffered or died during or as a result of that war.
 
All the records of the war period published at the time (1865-1877) noted that over a million USA and CSA military personnel were killed in the War to Prevent Southern Independence.  The Federal Official Record of the War of the Rebellion (commonly called the OR) says that there were just over 623,000 military deaths that were "documented."  This figure is not the whole story. It is tragic but it isn’t even the critical part of the story.
 
Lincoln’s hijacked U.S. military gave captured Negroes (whom northerners considered "contraband") the option of being shot or serving in their military.  The U.S. also did this in the "border States" with Caucasians. In the process individual state records show that between 800,000 and 1,200,000 Negroes were killed directly by the military or died of starvation as a result of the military presence and occupation of their area of the country.  Conservative figures show that about 800,000 to 1,000,000 Caucasians died as a direct of U.S. warfare against civilians which Lincoln commanded to be done in spite of world opinion and the first Geneva Convention that met in 1863 which codified the practices of warfare as they had been defined by Christian peoples for the previous 2-300 years.
 
The Geneva convention made it clear that the U.S. practice of Total War against civilians to demoralize the enemy (us) was strictly forbidden. The OR stated, as well as the testimony of U.S. generals to Congress after the war that, by specific design, 80% of the U.S.A. warfare directed against the people of the Confederate States of America was directed against our civilian populations.  And, who was that?  It was our children, women and the elderly.
 
It is reasonable to understand and conclude that the casualty rate against this largely unarmed population of children, women and the elderly suffered a higher percentage of casualties than the Confederate military when armed and fighting these demons of terror.
 
There is much about this war that, even we as Southerners, have not yet come to terms with. The U.S. killed one in four of men of war making age 17-60 and left most of those still living maimed for life missing a hand, arm, foot or leg. There are other aspects of this war I hope that we will be able to discuss without alienating our own people as the Southern movements mature and distant themselves from American Marxists. Beginning with WWI Southerners joined the military in disproportionate numbers, most of whom entertained the hope that their conspicuous presence in the military as they displayed their Confederate Flags on tanks, aircraft, etc. would convince the country that we were as patriotic as anyone else (the Yankee’s).
 
Well, this "Military Strategy" has not worked. "Serving (a highly propagandistic euphemistic)" has not gained the South any real respect from Yankee’s and socialists. They show our symbols less respect than ever. This same thing happened among the subjugated peoples of the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire, the German Empire, the British Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, the Persian Empire, The Soviet Empire, etc. The psychology and experience of subjugated peoples has not changed in thousands of years.  Subjugated people when they are not part of fixing their societies problems, those who are still living become part of the problem. That is why the term "reconstructed" has such a tragic meaning. Today’s term for "reconstructed" is more properly "deracinated" or "indoctrinated" or "brought to political correctness."  Our deracinated Southern culture, just like the millions of state-murdered and subjugated peoples before us (death by government), becomes about not who died resisting the tyrants but simply about who is left.
 
Any people’s greatest enemy now is not "the foreigner" but it is their own government.  During the last 200 years three out of four people who died by warfare died at the hands of their governments. The U.S. is responsible for more deaths of Southern men, women, children and the elderly than died at the hands of Mexicans, Nazi’s, Communists, Socialists or Shintoists.
 
At least we would begin to learn something from the past. Stay out of the U.S. military and stop being a part of modernity’s problems if we can not be a part of it’s answers to modern day tyrants.
 
Deo Vindice.
 
Timothy D. Manning
Executive Director
North Carolina Heritage Foundation