Memorial Day: America’s 7 costliest wars
1. American Civil War
Historian James McPherson described the American Civil War as “the central event in America's historical consciousness.” Fought from 1861 to 1865, the conflict continues to spark debate in the U.S. today.
The war that preserved the Union and ended legal slavery in the United States resulted in an estimated death toll exceeding 620,000 Americans, including both Union and Confederate soldiers.
“The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914,” McPherson explained.
The Civil War also included the deadliest single day in American history: Sept. 17, 1862, when the Battle of Antietam in Maryland left more than 3,600 people dead.
The conflict also featured what is widely considered the largest battle fought in North America, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, in which more than 50,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or reported missing.
“By the spring of 1865 all the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and when Union cavalry captured the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, resistance collapsed and the war ended,” McPherson wrote.
“The long, painful process of rebuilding a united nation free of slavery began.”
