Trivial Pursuit #2 (which means you can't Google!): Which of the following wars (in details) claimed the lives of the most U.S. soldiers?

Wasn’t it the Civil War?

Guessing (from what I’ve heard over the years) it’s the Civil War. If not, then I’d say Vietnam?

1. Civil War
2. WWII

Civil war.
Without googling, I think 58,000 died in Nam. WWII had 400,000. The Civil War was about 700,000.
The Revolutionary war was largely non-confrontational, and while I don’t know the number, it would be much, much less.

Most to least:
Civil War
WWII
Vietnam
Revolutionary War

Wait, the Confederates were not US soldiers. They were fighting against the United States.
WWII
Civil War
Vietnam
Revolutionary War

Yep, Civil war. Also claimed the most equine lives. For every soldier killed 5 horses also died with a staggering 3–5000 horses and mules at the Battle of Gettysberg alone. 4000 soldiers were killed in that battle as well. I have a soft spot for war horses. Est 1–3 million horses, mules and ponies went down alongside their riders and wagons.

I wonder how they disposed of all those bodies (horse and human)?

^ Some were buried, others just left to rot on the battlefields

Even more morbid when you consider that the entire population of the United States was less than 40 million.

Are we counting the Confederate losses as US losses or not? As @Call_Me_Jay points out, that makes a difference.

I, personally, would bunch the Union and Confederate losses together, but they break out as follows:

Union 140,414
Confederate 74,524
Total 214,938

Pretty lopsided war, wasn’t it.

^^Interesting that the Union had more losses, but won in the end.

@Dutchess_III Those numbers are way too low. Maybe that’s just on the battlefield. The accepted total is over three times higher, most (I think) died later from their wounds or from disease.

@JLeslie Partly the United States victory was due to the fact that General Grant could lose huge numbers of troops and still overpower the Confederates. Even at the time some people called him The Butcher.

Yeah, I found a site that says 620,000, so those numbers are way low. Maybe I misread my original source (I can Google cuz it’s my question! Buahhhhhaaaa!)

Oh. I did. TOTALLY misread it. Here is my source for the original question.

Vietnam is so damn tragic. We shouldn’t have lost one single kid, NOT ONE, in that fecking “Police Action.”

Anyway, the answer is “We lost the most soldiers in the Civil War.”

I seem to remember that more deaths in the Civil War resulted from infection and disease than actual battlefield trauma.

Turns out ⅔ of the deaths were from diseases and infections. For every three deaths in battle, 5 others died from diseases, with dysentery the chief killer.

Wow. What misery.