SUMMARIES OF DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS

Abstract

Ten years ago Maris Vinovskis published an influential essay that signaled a profound shift in Civil War scholarship.This dissertation was completed in September 1999 in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota under the direction of Russell R. Menard and Steven Ruggles. Financial support was provided by a fellowship from the University of Minnesota Graduate School. Although thousands of books and articles had been written about the military experiences of Civil War participants, Vinovskis contended that relatively little was known about their actual lives. Vinovskis called explicit attention to the demographic cost of the war and its continuing influence on the life course of the Civil War generation. An estimated 618,222 military deaths occurred during the war—roughly equal to the number of deaths suffered in all other American wars through the Korean War combined. The human cost of the Civil War becomes even more spectacular when one considers the rate of death. Nearly one in eight white men of military age died during the war, exceeding the rate of death in World War II by a factor of six, and the rate of death in the Vietnam War by a factor of 65.Vinovskis, “Have Social Historians.”