The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war

I hope that the method/figures are reasonable to Bruce. If not, I would like to improve them.

Since there are so many incidents with at best fragmentary/vague period data, this is challenging to quantify and much of it could be expressed as ranges. Even larger events like the Battles of Kirksville, Lone Jack, Independence, Moore's Mill, etc. had sketchy casualty figures on the Southern side. Then there are the estimates of guerrillas/recruits killed during patrols/pursuits which often appear to be greatly exaggerated. One would have to go through the source reports/accounts to get an idea of where the numbers came from. I might put high confidence on recovering/counting X bodies and negligible confidence in something like: "we exchanged fire killing three of them before we were forced to withdraw from lack of ammunition" or "because they were reinforced", etc.

Something I should have noted before: these figures do not include indirect deaths from disease or unrelated accident (e.g. the ongoing travails of refugees/plundered farmsteads of any north/south sympathy.) They also don't include deaths while imprisoned, except in the case of execution/murder or being killed while trying to escape which in some cases is indistinguishable from the other two... Therefore the deaths of citizens and soldiers/guerrillas/recruits held in regional jails and prisons are not part of this tally other than exceptions above as they are related in the book's text.

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1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war
Re: 1862 fatalities from Missouri guerrilla war