North Carolina probably did not sustain the most War deaths of the Confederate States, but it surely had the highest percentage. Quite a remarkable statistic and a very eloquent tribute to the tarheels.

In 1875, Our Living and Our Dead, a partisan magazine published in New Bern by former Confederate officer Stephen D. Pool, printed an editorial written by Baptist minister turned journalist Theodore Bryant Kingsbury, titled "The Number of Troops Furnished by North Carolina." Kingsbury, without citing sources, claimed that North Carolina "must have lost by the casualties of war largely over 30,000 men," and "gave to the Lost Cause more troops than any other state."