The Kansas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Mortality Rate for Kansas Troops

Keith.... I do know that there were several factors in errors between the 1867 and later versions of the Adjutant General's report. Early record keeping among Kansas regiments was poor or non-existant and references in the Bienniel Report that covers Lane's Brigade mentions that the records would continue to be incomplete as they were based on memory and what paperwork they could find. Secondly, mortality records were less than stellar. For example one version of the Adjuntant General's report shows a Third Kansas soldier as disposition/status unknown but a memorial to another soldier killed at Priairie Grove, explicitly states he froze to death on the prairie. Another example shows a soldier "died"; an earlier version showed he was hung by an angry crowd for "rape". Some inconsistencies were more for decorum than for accuracy.

As far as Fox, my understanding is that his data was statistically driven while Dyer was a mental prodegy who memorized every Union regiment's statistics. Both have distinct value but may not be accurate when compared to each other.

The math error may or may not have been "discovered" but the question of loyalty and courage were embraced as a "provable" topic by several authors, Dyer's, Fox and Livermore and more modern authors all developed methodologies to prove courage on the part of both Union and Confederate regiments. Fox specifically used casualties as a definition of courage and makes for some interesting reading. States whose regiments show up in Fox adopted these theories in a competitive way. That is why Minnesota claims to have the first Union volunteer, or Kansas says that they had the highest participation per capita rate, or Vermont troops were among the bravest, etc. While making for interesting speculation it doesn't change the fact that both Union and Confederate regiments for the most part were ill prepared or underarmed to assume warfare with each other and, yet, did so.

For me the disappointment is the lack of accurate records, but it also makes discovery that much more interesting.

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Mortality Rate for Kansas Troops
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