A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead (Hacker, 2011)

A peer reviewed demographic study by historian J. David Hacker, comparing male survival rates recorded in the 1850, 1860 and 1870 United States censuses to derive an indirect, census based count of Civil War dead. Hacker's method found the traditional figure of 620,000 dead understated the toll by roughly twenty percent, and reports a most likely total of about 752,000 dead, with the underlying data supporting a range of roughly 650,000 to 850,000. It is the peer reviewed and widely cited successor to the older estimate, though its indirect demographic method carries its own margin of error rather than a direct body count.