Why was civil war the most devastating conflict in American history?

Answer 1

Somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 people died in the American Civil War, all of them American. More Americans died during the Civil War than in every other war combined. A similar number of people were left permanently disabled due to injuries or disease.

Industrial and economic infrastructure throughout the southern states was left in ruins at the end of the war. Entire cities were leveled. Crops and livestock were destroyed. At least one United States Army general, General Tecumseh Sherman, carried out a policy of destroying all public and private property that his troops could not carry with them as his army advanced southward through Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina.

When the war began, most of the South's economy was based on the export of agricultural products. This became impossible after the war began. Throughout the war, the United States Navy maintained a blockade of all Southern Coastlines which severely disrupted trade with Europe.

Most of the people who would normally be workers in peacetime - young, white men - were the same people who served as soldiers in the war. Many were severely injured during the course of the war or simply emigrated to the west after it was over.

It was the most destructive event in American history.