31179
W. Britain
The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American
history. Of the 880,000 Southerners mobilized to fight for the
Confederacy, 94,000 were killed in action outright or mortally wounded,
but a wholly accurate count will almost certainly never be made. In the
three major battles of 1862, the Texas Brigade suffered 1,786
casualties. This reflected one of the unusual facts about this unit –
whereas most Civil War soldiers died of disease rather than in combat,
the opposite was true about the Texas Brigade. The majority of their
deaths occurred on the battlefield or as a result of battle-related
wounds.