In our new Princeton University Press book, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War, we examine the war experience for Union Army soldiers. We weave a single narrative from the life histories of 41,000 Union Army soldiers, diaries and letters, and government documents. Our core questions are not those typically asked in a military history. When are men willing to sacrifice for the common good? What are the benefits to men of friendship? How do communities deal with betrayal? And what are the costs and benefits of being in a diverse community?
In this post and our next post, we would like to provide an overview of some of our key findings. For readers who enjoy applied econometrics, we encourage you to go Dora Costa’s UCLA website where you can download our key academic papers.
Desertion
A soldier who sought to survive the U.S Civil War should have deserted and roughly 200,000 Union Army soldiers did (about a tenth of the army). Out of the roughly 80,000 men who were caught, 147 were executed. Those who stayed faced a death rate of 14 percent, with half of the deaths from wounds and half from disease. In contrast, during World War II, Stalin’s armies had special detachments that formed a second line to shoot at any soldiers in the first line who fled and the families of all deserters were also arrested. Out of the roughly 35,000 German soldiers tried for desertion by the Third Reich, about 22,750 were executed. Democracies cannot inflict such punishments. Lincoln recognized that “you can’t order men shot by the dozens or twenties. People won’t stand it.”
Given these facts, is it surprising that only a tenth of men actually deserted? We argue that desertion is a great measure of “community participation”. In a group of 100 men, if one man deserts the army he raises his probability of survival but puts his fellow men at risk to be crushed by the enemy. Unlike in the modern corporation with bonus pay and pay for performance, the diaries these men left makes clear that they were fighting for each other.
We use our unique longitudinal data to document several facts about the determinants of desertion. Here we focus on our most salient findings. We encourage you to read our book to learn all! In what follows, please keep in mind that these findings are based on multivariate statistical analysis so we are holding all other factors constant and varying one explanatory variable at a time. When the Union Army was winning battles, desertion rates declined. Just like in professional sports, everyone loves a winner. Desertion probabilities were higher in more diverse war companies. Turning this statement around, men who fought in more homogenous war companies (based on occupation, age, and place of enlistment) featured lowered desertion probabilities. A generalization of this finding is that people are better citizens in social settings when their community looks like them. In our next post, we will relate this finding to ongoing social science research on the costs of living in a diverse community.
Surviving POW Camps
Many of us have enjoyed watching Hogan’s Heroes on television. While Bob Crane outwitted Clink and Sgt. Schultz in his WW2 Nazi POW camp, U.S Civil War soldiers sent to Andersonville had a lot less fun. An estimated 211,411 Union soldiers were captured during the Civil War. Seven percent of all U.S. Civil War soldiers were ever imprisoned compared to 0.8 percent for World War II.
Civil War POWs suffered from poor and meager rations, from contaminated water, from grounds covered with human excrement and with other filth, from a want of shoes, clothing, and blankets (having often been stripped of these by needy Confederate soldiers), from a lack of shelter in the open stockades that constituted camps such as Andersonville and Millen, from the risk of being robbed and murdered by fellow prisoners, and from trigger-happy guards. Our data show that at Andersonville, the most notorious of the POW camps, roughly 40 percent of all men of who passed through the camp died, and half of the deaths occurred within three months of entry. The chief causes of death were scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery.
How did men survive such horrific conditions? The accounts of survivors provide some clues, as do the accounts of survivors of Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulag, and Japanese and Vietnamese POW internment camps. But some accounts conclude that death is random; others emphasize psychological defense mechanisms; others emphasize the importance of leadership; and still others emphasize the role of friends. We can use our longitudinal data and a data set on almost the entire population of Andersonville put together by the Park Service to examine the effects of age, social status, rank, camp population, and the presence of own officers on survival.
The single most important determinant of camp survival was how crowded the camp was. Another important determinant of camp survival was age. Those of higher rank fared better, as did those with useful skills. Men with officers from their own companies were more likely to survive than those without or with fewer officers.
Holding these factors constant, social networks within the camps increased a soldier’s survival probability. We can establish this because we know each POW’s war company and home town. We document that men who were in the camp with “more friends” had higher probabilities of survival then men with similar demographics who were in the camp with fewer friends. Ties between kin and ties between comrades of the same ethnicity were stronger than ties between other men from the same company.
Why did friends increase the probability of surviving POW camps? Did friends provide extra food or clothing, tend to the sick, protect against the predation of other prisoners? Or did simply having a friend have a positive effect on men’s immune and endocrine systems? Monkeys randomly assigned to stable or unstable social conditions and inoculated with the simian immunodeficiency virus face shorter lives if they live in unstable social conditions conditions. We cannot run such tests on humans. But, in our final post, we will discuss some intriguing evidence for how social networks can cushion psychological shocks. We would like to conduct similar survival research based on records from the Nazi holocaust camps. We have not been able to identify credible network measures (analogous to our War Company identifiers) to be able to establish who knew who within these camps.
But isn't there a problem in this comparison? For deserters, you only count executions; for those who stayed, you count disease as well as enemy fire. Presumably some deserters died before the end of the war from causes other than execution, right? How much less subject to disease were they than those who stayed? I suppose it doesn't make much of a difference, but it should make some.
His unit was captured not long after he joined. They were sent to Andersonville. How likely is it that he had the time to get to know many of his fellow Union soldiers or that he had any friends who joined up with him?
He was 40 years old, as well, and a private. He was a very unlucky man. While in the Confederate Army he spent time in a Union prison camp. He was released in exchange for the release of Union soldiers.
All of what you write fits in quite well with everything I've learned studying my family's history.
PS - His ggrandson was a lot luckier. Though he spent three years in the Japanese prison camp there, he was one of 11 that escaped the Palawan Massacre.
The conclusion that "people are better citizens in social settings when their community looks like them" is bound to be provocative. But one question I would ask is how you defined "homogeneous war companies." Was homogeneity primarily in terms of place of residence/enlistment, or were other factors such as occupation more important?
So if you're in a unit with a significant proportion of men from your local area, you're significantly more likely to have to deal with your former comrades later in life - or, at the least, people who've heard that you were the coward who ran from Johnny Reb. If you're living in a city and even your neighbors don't know you, it's much easier to fashion a life where your deserter status is unknown to everyone you come across.
So you could generalize that to "people are better citizens when they're in a group with like individuals," sure. But I'm not sure you shouldn't say instead "negative social incentives don't function as well when applied to homogeneous groups of anonymous people."
I'm not sure what an easy test to split those two cases would be, however.
As Webb put it in his novel of what was supposedly Gulf I, "they may knife each other over a a game of cards, or kill one another over a whore, but they will not dishonor the Legion".
Which breaks down in the disorganization of a prison camp. The communists knew what allowing GC-like self-organization of prison camps meant--increased resistance--and so, from Hanoi to Korea to Hanoi and elsewhere, the bonds were more easily fractured.
Wow, where can I meet some of the other 60%?
The interesting thing about those captured at Dien Bien Phu, as Fall noted, was that they were all radicalized by the experienced. The less educated soldiers and the colonial troops tended to become marxist radicals. The more educated officers and the Legion NCO's and the like tended to take on a fascist outlook, thinking it a good way to fight the communists.
Perhaps cruel prison camps sow the seeds of later revenge - e.g. the KKK and Northern vengefulness against the South.
FWIW, my personal experience is that of someone who served in the Army Reserves for 8 years, then was called to active duty at the outbreak of the first Persian Gulf war and served in a non-combat status for seven months, returning home to sleep in my own bed most nights. No doubt the experiences of most combatants in the Civil War and other conflicts was 100- or 1000-fold (pick any number) as "intense" or "stressful" as mine, still I can tell you that when we were mobilized I appreciated "unit cohesion." Though for many reasons my interactions with others in our large hospital unit had been quite limited, it was a positive thing to have had some prior exposure to them rather been suddenly thrust into a new group, as some were when they were individually detailed to other units.
Regular Army units are assembled from people who have no prior experience of one another, drawn as they are from all over the United States. On the other hand, the National Guard and Reserves are drawn from considerably less far flung places and may have known one another in the civilian sector and/or served together for years before being called to active duty as a unit. I wonder if there is an observable difference in "social networking" or "unit cohesion" in Regular Army units versus those made up of Reservists or National Guard.
Or . . . Northern vengefulness and Southern murder of surrendering soldiers or Andersonville. (as well as treason).
In wars prior to the ACW (Napoleonic and Barbary Wars were the fare at military schools) it was typical to parole captured units, or to expect prisoner exchanges or returns based on ransom. It may have been the expectation of officers and men at the outset.
You're right, but those practices largely came after the Civil War. 19th-century armies weren't professional forces as we know them today. The peacetime officer corps did mostly come from West Point, VMI etc. but in wartime large numbers of social gentry with little or no military training were appointed officers, and placed in command of equally untrained volunteer soldiers. Combat training was largely "on the job" with the results you'd expect. Until at least the Spanish-American War, many regular army units were local militia - the descendants of the Minute Men - with not a professional soldier among them.
Imagine war being declared, and your local Rotary/Lions/Elk Lodge etc. taking rifles and uniforms from the armory, calling themselves a regiment and marching off to the front with maybe a week-long stop for basic training along the way.
The Marine Corps, by way of example, generates excellent unit cohesion over generations; so does the Royal Marines. The make-up of these forces is exceedingly diverse. In my company in the RVN, we had troops from almost every state, several from Canada (including one from Quebec) several from other countries, as well. But they were and are all Marines.
The French regiments drew from all over the empire. French paras in Algeria had many troops recruited in Vietnam and sub-Sahara Africa. Those regiments were and are extremely cohesive and possess exceptional technical skills.
A famous regiment from Scotland was The Cameronians. It recruited from the followers of a man named Cameron, a Presbyterian evangelical. Its unit cohesion was legendary.
Unit cohesion, like fire superiority, is mostly a psychological issue. Race, home areas, religion, etc. all play roles but are not determinative.
"The [U.S.] Marines seemed to respond to [captivity] with less difficulty than the U.S. Army prisoners. 'The American soldiers semmed to see the way out of the experience as individuals,' [said a Royal marine who had been captured at Chosin with U.S. Marines]. If one stole a bit of food, he would scuffle into a corner and eat it alone. The British and American Marines took it in groups. We stuck together. When the marching [to the camp] was looking rough, we'd say to each other: Come off it -- the f***ing commando school was tougher than this.'"
(From Max Hastings, The Korean War).
Is it ethical to use date from clearly illegal, unethical, and immoral conduct?
Many scientists shy away from using results of scientific testing from Nazi concentration camps for just that reason. Should we not expand that to other venues?
If not, what is to stop the scientist from conducting unethical experiments from justifying their actions?
You mean to use knowledge of how soldiers in the past responded to imprisonment in order to better prepare our troops for the possible rigors to come? How is it unethical to do this? You might as well say we can't learn about the need for sanitation from cholera epidemics, or use data about fatalities in auto crashes to build better cars. These things are historical events, not experimnets set up for our amusement.
Unlike a cholera epidemic, the conditions in Civil War prison camps and Nazi concentration camps were caused by immorality and depravity.
But, conditions at prison camps, presumably, unlike experiments in Nazi controlled concentration camps, were not set up to explicity torture defenseless individuals. Perhaps that is a useful distinction.
Perhaps, based upon this distinction, we can use data from concentration camps, while excluding data collected from immoral experiments.
Allan
Yet another example of political correctness standing in the way of science.
I'm puzzled by your use of the term "looks like". We don't have any way to know what these soldiers "looked like" (no photos, paintings, etc.). What you seem to mean is that they came from the same community. That doesn't mean they "looked alike" in terms meaningful to the mid-1860s (say, were Irish or German or English). Cartoons and verbal descriptions of that era make clear distinctions among these "races" (that word was used then for ethnic background). Nor does it mean they shared the same religion (though they were undoubtedly mostly Protestant of some denomination or other). Can you elaborate on what you mean by "looks like"?
I had an experience early in Basic in which half a dozen guys, whom I did not know, came to my aid because the trouble was a couple of guys with red tags--too complex to explain--and I, and the helpers, had green tags. That was all it took. Green tags are on the side of green tags and, "Aw, you let them get away."
There was a study that replacements in WW II Infantry units fared less well in combat than did the original members. Part of it is laid to unit bonding--they were dead before they were bonded--and part of it is because the original divisions had far more unit and tactical training before they went to combat than did individual replacements who'd just gone through training as individuals.
For example, I would think that historical "data" about torture might beneficially be used to guide the training of soldiers on what hardships they can safely withstand, and when they are going to need to give information/misinformation, rather than resist. The same for info about how long one cansa fely remain in water of a certain temperature, etc. The fact that the data exists because the North Koreans committed crimes against our former soldiers is, I believe, no reason to refrain from giving our present soldiers the best training we can.
Nazi researchers conducted experiments for a number of purposes. for example, they put subjects into vacuums and immersed them in ice to see what affect high altitude flying would have on pilots. They dismembered twins and triplets for genetic research. The Nazis accumulated a lot of valuable data that, due to ethical concerns, would not be available elsewhere.
By using the data, are we justifying the experiments? Can we weigh the harm done to innocents against the benefits the "good guys" would receive? If we can use the data, was it wrong of the Nazi government to use it? If it is right to use the data, how can we condemn those (which we certainly do) who collected it?
I am having difficulty following your reasoning. Perhaps that is a deficiency of mine, I hope not one arising from some degree of moral blindness. Nevertheless, it seems to me that you are saying that we should or must ignore some events that have occurred in the past because by paying attention to them and learning from them we somehow "justify" them and perhaps encourage others to emulate them. Is this so--both in the sense "of is this your positon" and of "can this be true"?
Costa and Kahn are extracting data through their delving into contemporary records for the purpose of understanding what transpires under such circumstances. No Confederate (or Union) actors are getting posthumous honor for generating the data, and no one suffered in order that this data could be generated, though the data may be derived from the considerable suffering of a great many. It is, as David McCourt suggested, somewhat like gaining medical understanding by studying a cholera epidemic, which might be considered an "experiment of nature" from which data may be derived.
Yes.
Yes.
I agree that is a tough call. But philosophy, morals, and ethics sometimes are tough. I don't pretend to have the answer, but I think it is a legitimate issue.
I wonder if Costa and Kahn have considered the point.
Allan
In that regard, the militia system, from the Greek city-states through the early U.S. republic, served more the purpose of making government dependent on the citizens, rather than rendering citizens independent of government as the latter expressed in the "insurrectionist" theory, though the latter is also valid.
Representation via refusal of service led to the Philadelphia Convention, after the Massachusetts militia refused to suppress Shays's Rebellion out of sympathy for the tax/foreclosure protestors. Congress lacked the power to requisition either troops or funds from other states, and this is why the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the current constitution.
I was going to dismiss you out of hand, but I can actually imagine a circumstance where the use of such data would seem to imply approval of the experiments. For example, if modern-day fascists cited the results to justify their own bigotry. Or - perhaps - if the descendant of a legal entity involved in the original experiments derived some income from research based on them.
But, if a researcher with no particular connection (including ideology) to the original experiment (or prison camp, or what-have-you) finds the data useful in their studies for some reason, I don't think it's reasonable to hold them guilty by association.
I think you're try circling around the same talking point because you want someone to agree with you because you really don't want to admit to such information being useful. I think that it most certainly is useful and that we as decent and caring people owe it to the sufferers of tragedies to learn every possible thing we can from their experiences. What a waste of all the lives the Nazis took if nothing useful is taken from their experiments; I believe that were I to have been experimented on I would wish that after my enemies were vanquished that some benefit to mankind and the greater good could be made from such data. Sometimes horrible things have to happen to remind people that they are horrible and for something to be learned; think of all the great lessons we've learned from the numerous horrors that have been visited upon humanity by nature and by mankind; black death=sanitation good, civil war=slavery bad, WW2=genocide/fascism=bad, cold war=communism bad, etc. I could go on, but I hope you get my point.
Simply to say that the problem is tough does not provide an answer as to whether your conclusion is correct or moral. Please ask yourself whether you would refuse either (1) to approve a medical procedure for your child or (2) to use for yourself a safety device, on the sole ground that the knowledge that caused the medical procedure to be invented or the device to be designed and adopted for use was obtained in an immoral manner.
Is it too much of a leap for me to cite George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past...."?
Stated in another fashion, can knowledge be so tainted that its use to achieve a good purpose is forbidden?
Very interesting blog entry, and I am looking forward to reading the book.
Quick question: as one commenter hinted at (above), mightn't there be a reputational element to the desertion decision? In fact, I would think that reputation would be a very important consideration in the decision to desert.
How to measure this?
(1) Have you been able to ascertain the origins of the units/deserters? I would think that one might be able to presume that larger cities, in general, are less socially-cohesive. In such locales, therefore, reputational injury might be reduced or eliminated for someone looking to return home after their desertion. Therefore, I would expect to find that, all things being equal, those from larger cities would be more likely to desert than those from small towns or villages.
(2) Have you been able to identify the immediate destinations of deserters? I would assume that, to avoid arrest and reputational injury, deserters may be more inclined then their peers to travel to a new locale where they are unknown. In that sense, I would expect deserters to travel to larger cities (where they can enjoy a certain anonymity) or to the West.
Thanks for the insights. Keep up the good work!
I certainly agree with those who argue that the data could be useful and the usefulness could outweigh concerns about the means used to collect the data. It is, however, a very Machievellian argument.
My question are:
1) Should we (as a society) employ a balancing test? and
2) If we do employee a balancing test, where should the lines be drawn?
"conditions in Civil War prison camps were caused by immorality and depravity."
Something not proved.
Food and other resources in the South were scarce and sometime unavailable. Was Andersonville hell? Yes. But was it hell on purpose. Not sure. What of Northern camps were they any better and in what ways were they better?
Comparision of Civil War POW camps and NAZI concentration camps is INVALID. No matter how many died the POW camps were not designed and intended to kill the POW's.
According to a book I just read, parole of captured soldiers was the case at the beginning of the Civil War as well.
Some numbers for comparison would be useful. Earlier you said that 14% of union soldiers died, half of disease. How did a year at Andersonville compare with a year on duty (a) in a field army, and (b) in the army overall (which includes, for example, taking one's ease manning the forts around Washington DC). How did it compare iwth death rates of Confederates in Union prison camps? Were there other Confederate camps besides Andersonville? What was the death rate in Confederate field armies, from combat and from disease?
The system broke down irreparably when the Confederates began summarily executing captured United States military personnel. As a reprisal, the United States stopped participating in the exchanges and parole systems; periodic threats to execute captured Confederates were never carried out.
(Yes, the United States personnel in question were black soldiers and their white officers.)
If half the soldiers died of disease, that's news to me. WW I is reputed to be the first war in which the generals got more guys killed fighting than died of disease. See Zinsser, Rats Lice and History, and others.
I've looked at some regimental histories for Michigan units in the Civil War and none of them lost more in combat than by disease. I only looked at a few, but it was pretty one-sided.
Slim, in his "Defeat into Victory" discusses disease and the horrid numbers of soldiers hors de combat due to disease. He instituted a process that checked battalions for evidence of malaria pills--probably Atabrine. If the number of no-shows on the test was more than five percent, the ratio of test error, the battalion commander was relieved.
Some numbers are so far out of expectation that they are tough to recall after finding them. An example would be Forester's "The Age of Fighting Sail" about mostly the USN and Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Era, including The War of 1812. It is more than a military history, including some astonishing stats. One of them was the ratio of sailors dying of disease and accident as opposed to combat. Many, many times higher. Astonishing.
And the bit of doggerel regarding the West Africa Station and anti-slavery patrols: "Beware and take care of the Bight of Benin. There's one comes out for forty goes in."
It is said that, early in the Victorian era, Prince Albert discovered that the death rate in barracks was higher than that in prison.
Andersonville's forty percent was high enough to suggest deliberate negligence. But it's not, imo, to be compared to, say 7% in the Union Army.
I don't find that to be the case among the infantry regiments I've looked at. Here are some New York units (figures taken from the National Park Service web site). No doubt the percentage killed in action is lower for cavalry and artilley, for infantry units mainly in garrison -- like the 6th NY -- and much lower for rear echelon units, but for those near the pointy end of the stick, it's the reverse. And if the regiment was unlucky enough to be in the middle of things at Antietam, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, Frederickburg, etc., in 20 minutes it could lose more men than disease would take in the entire war.
Regt / KIA / Died from Disease
1st NY Inf 79 34
2nd NY Inf 26 22
3rd NY Inf 37 85
4th NY Inf 64 24
5th NY Inf 177 34
6th NY Inf 14 32
7th NY Inf 102 47
8th NY Inf 90 43
9th NY Inf 71 25
* * *
69 NY Inf 259 142
Does this imply that the desertion rate in the 19 regular infantry regiments (which were not recruited locally) was higher than among the United States Volunteers (state regiments), which were recruited locally (by company for the most part)?
Was there a similar comparison of USVs to the few militia units that served briefly (IIRC some PA militia served for a month or so when Lee moved North prior to Gettysburg -- militia service was more common in the CSA)? These units were not only locally recruited, but served locally.
Was any comparison made over time? For several reasons, a number of states did not replace casualties in serving regiments, but recruited new regiments instead. Were there differences in desertion rates for companies in regiments that had served with the same folks for two or three years and companies in fresh regiments?
What about conscripts in the final year or so of the war; what was their desertion rate compared to volunteers?
Perhaps not to everyone's satisfaction, but proved in court against Henry Wirz. FWIW, two of my collateral ancestors died in Libby Prison.
Disease was a function of being in the Army. The longer you were in the Army, the greater chance of dying of disease, unless battle took you off first. Units which had a good deal of time in camp before combat would have had higher death rates from disease before battle than those who went right to it. After disease and battle, there wouldn't have been enough left to influence one set of numbers or the other by very much.
Several factors impacted this. Colds, to use one example, are made up of over a hundred different viruses. You have one, you don't get another of the same type. So most of the guys in a regiment had had a dozen of so of the most common colds in their immediate area. Put together with guys from other areas--townships or counties--they were subject to colds for which they were not immune. At this time, they would have been in lousy accomodations eating lousy food and bunked or tented with four to ten other guys from anywhere. They might have had two or more infections at the same time.
When I was at Ft. Dix in 69, there was a system of keeping units who'd arrived in a given week--recruits into Basic Training companies--isolated from units made up of guys who'd arrived at some other time. Only green tags (first week of Feb) in the battalion mess or PX or post theater at the same time. Red tags (last week of Jan) later. Blue tags some other time. That way, we got over the colds brought from all over the US--and some interesting other places--without being infected with yet other breeds. We had sneeze shields on our bunks. Nevertheless, we had five cases of meningitis in my platoon resulting in at least one case--that I know of--of medical retirement.
At other posts, trainees wore surgical masks at almost all times.
Our formations sounded like a convention of seals. People were forever falling out with fevers and chills. This was, it should be said, the mid-twentieth century.
The reason for far fewer fatalities was not the avoidance of infection, but the medical care for those afflicted. Bin--if I may say so--go.
To address it another way, if you read a bunch about the Civil War, something starts niggling at your awareness. Yes, Antietam was horrible, as was Shiloh, as were a dozen other big fights, and of course scores of smaller fights. But when you start adding up what you know of casualties from your reading, you don't get near 600,000 dead guys. You just don't. As you read further, you still don't. When you consider that many of the "wounded" in a fight might have died later in hospital...you still don't. You don't get half.
I will acknowledge that some units got hit pretty hard in battle. For most of them, the war was mostly camp, and some hard marching, and then meeting engagements lasting a day or three, at most. Certain sieges excepted. Sieges, as it happened, had worse accomodations for the besiegers than did formal camps, and, presumably, worse death rates from the dysentery/typhoid kind of affliction.
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