Facts About the War

Forty thousand Confederate and Union soldiers are estimated to have perished from wounds or illness during the entire Vicksburg campaign. The siege itself claimed almost 3,000 Confederate soldiers and 4,900 Federal soldiers.

The American population at the time of the war was 30 million. The Union army had between 2.5 and 2.75 million men in uniform, while the less populated South had 750,000 to 1.23 million. The figure usually given for the number of soldiers who died in the Civil War is 620,000 (more than the combined deaths of all other American wars). But if you count the number of men who subsequently died of injuries or illness inflicted during the Civil War, the figure might be as high as 1.5 million. Because regiments were made up of soldiers from the same area, in one battle some small towns lost most or even all of their men and boys between the ages of fifteen and fifty. Many of these solders were buried in unmarked graves, far from home and lost to their families forever.

The Union awarded 128 Medals of Honor to Union soldiers who fought at Vicksburg.

Vicksburg had the most elaborate trench system ever devised prior to World War I.

The typical Civil War soldier was twenty-six years old; stood five feet, eight inches tall; and weighed 135 pounds.

Few regular soldiers in either the North or the South had military experience prior to the war, and they received little more than basic training before seeing actual combat. Most volunteer soldiers were farmers and small business owners, and it’s possible that as many as 400,000 were boys under the age of eighteen. Though post-traumatic stress disorder was not a known diagnosis at the time, many soldiers who returned home from the war suffered from depression and nightmares and could not resume normal lives.

During the war, it was not unusual for officers to bring their wives and children with them or at least to have visits from them. Some soldiers also had their families with them, living alongside the army wherever it went.

The Union armies were named for rivers, and the Rebel armies for states. Thus, Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was so named because the men were on the Tennessee River when it was organized, while one of the Southern armies was the Army of Northern Virginia because that’s where it was organized.

In spite of primitive living conditions, families sometimes accompanied soldiers to war.