Advantages And Disadvantages Of The South Civil War

The North faced many disadvantages and advantages in comparison to the South due to the fact that although it had many more supplies and soldiers, it also was fighting an offensive war in territory that they were not used to. Their weakness when it came to disease against the Southerners was their lack of contact with the disease in the first place. It was especially those small town New England boys who had never been exposed to yellow fever or malaria—because the western Union soldiers were familiar with mosquitos’ diseases such as “ague”—which meant that the Northern boys were highly susceptible to the diseases that flourished in the swampy South.” However, one of the many reasons that the North won the war was because of it had more supplies than the South—which included medicine, especially for ailments not directly related to battle, such as anesthesia for amputations. There is a medicine called quinine, which was the most effective against malaria, and nineteen tons of the medicine were used by the Union for troops, especially among those in the Confederacy; the Confederacy had quinine shortages, so they didn’t have this benefit. And such as with the 2nd Lieutenant Elliot’s letter

Disease and courage are inexplicably intertwined, as can be seen through the sometimes painful letters of soldiers and doctors wrote home to their families. Despite the fact that approximately 620,000 soldiers died on both side of the Civil War, and over two-thirds because of diseases like malaria and symptoms like diarrhea, soldiers still found the strength to believe it was honor to die for their country and their manhood, even when their deaths were a lot less noble than they thought it would be. In the end, the two major causes for death during the Civil War was not bombardments or enemy fire or starvation—but rather, courage and