New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. However, incomplete records have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll both nationally, and especially, at the state level. In this article, we leverage the recently released full count of individual census returns and a sample of linked records across multiple censuses to provide i) the most precise national estimate of excess mortality to date and ii) reliable state-level estimates of excess mortality among native-born white males. Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample. Leveraging a novel migration-adjusted census comparison method, we document the extent to which the war’s toll was much greater in the Confederate states than in the Union.