The Pestilential Wrath Of Strange Gods
To misquote Shakespeare’s Mercutio, “A plague on your houses.”
Speaking about the 45th president’s Himalayan-sized range of legal problems, the one-time vice-presidential candidate who later quit her gubernatorial post half-way through her term told a conservative commentator:
“I want to ask them: What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this. I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”
A Georgia state senator bombastically proclaimed that if the self-imposed problems of a former president are not magically resolved to his satisfaction, “our constituencies are going to be fighting in the streets. Do you want a civil war? I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle.”
Civil War!?!?
With the exception of Vietnam, the War for Independence lasted longer than all other American wars.
With the exception of the Civil War, the Revolutionary War destroyed more lives and property than any other American war.
It was not simply a battle against red-coated British troops. It included German regulars at the hire of the king, British-allied Native Americans and American militias loyal to the crown. Roughly forty percent of the American population remained uncommitted to either side. The war was fought on land by regular, militia and guerilla forces and at sea – with help from the French - on the Atlantic and in Mediterranean.
University of Michigan historian Howard H. Peckham, author of twenty-one books on early American history and noted for establishing accurate numbers of Revolutionary War deaths, estimated that between 25,000 and 70,000 American patriots died during active military service in the Colonial cause. Approximately 6,800 were killed in battle, while at least 17,000 died from disease – the majority while prisoners of war on prison ships in New York Harbor. The number of patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the War has been conservatively estimated at 8,500 to 25,000. It is estimated that 10,000 died from various illnesses in 1776 alone.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the population of the newly independent United States in July 1776 was 2.5 million.
First produced in 1730, the Brown Bess – 62 inches long and weighing around ten pounds – was used by British Regulars, Loyalists and Patriot forces, especially during the earliest years of the conflict. Well-trained British and American soldiers could fire three or four shots a minute – every 15 to 20 seconds – with this and other smoothbore muskets. However, these weapons had an accurate range of only 80 yards – the reason why 16-inch steal bayonets were affixed to the end of these muskets.
Flintlock muskets with grooves carved inside the barrel that allowed the musket ball to spin while exiting the rifle were popular with the American forces and accurate to 250 yards. But because the grooves required more time to ram the ball into the breech, soldiers often needed a minute or two to reload. Prior to the War, they had been used for hunting, but their effective long range was offset by the fact that bayonets could not be attached.
While most illnesses among Colonial forces were caused by the unsanitary conditions of the camps, most wounds were caused by musket balls or the bayonet. If a bone was so severely damaged that a limb could not be save, “surgeons” performed amputations without anesthesia or sterilization. When it was available, Colonial officers received rum and brandy; enlisted men had to make do with a wood stick to bite on. Two assistants held the patient on the operating table; a leather tourniquet was placed four fingers above the line where the limb was to be removed; the surgeon used a knife to cut to the bone; arteries were moved aside and tacked away with needles; and, when the surgeon had a clear field, he would use a bone saw.
A competent surgeon could saw through a bone in less than 45 seconds.
Only 35 percent of the patients who went through this procedure survived.
During the American Civil War, 364,511 Union soldiers were killed and 281,881 wounded; total Union losses were 646,392. Confederate losses have been estimated at 454,000 with 260,000 dead and 194,000 wounded.
In 1860, the population of the thirty-six states was approximately 31.5 million, including just shy of four million slaves.
The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865 is approximately equal to the total number of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War combined. When compared to the size of the American population it was six times that of World War II.
A Civil War soldier’s chances of not surviving the war was about one in four. Prior to the Vietnam War, the number of Americans killed surpassed all other wars combined. Moreover, the mortality rate for Union prisoners of war was 15.5% and for Confederate soldiers it was 12%. One in five White Southern men of military age did not survive the Civil War.
There has never been accurate documentation of civilian deaths in the Civil War. However, Princeton University scholar and Civil War historian James McPherson has estimated that there were 50,000 civilian deaths.
Writing for the United States Park Service, historian and former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust (Death and Dying--Civil War Era National Cemeteries: Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary nps.gov), noted:
“Americans were unprepared for the impact of these deaths; what to do with the bodies that covered the fields of battle, how to mourn so many lost, how to remember and how to understand.
“The impact and meaning of the war’s death toll went beyond the sheer numbers who died. Death’s significance for the Civil War generation changed dramatically from its previous prevailing assumptions about life’s proper end – and who should die, when, where, and under what circumstances… Although mid-19th-century Americans endured a high rate of infant mortality, they expected that most individuals who had reached young adulthood would survive into middle age. Yet, the Civil War took young, healthy men’s lives rapidly, often instantly, and destroyed them with disease, injury, or both. This marked a sharp and alarming departure from existing preconceptions about who should die. Both Civil War soldiers and civilians distinguished between what many referred to as ‘ordinary death,’ as it had occurred in prewar years, from the manner and frequency of death in Civil War battlefields, hospitals, and camps and from the war’s interruptions of civilian lives.
“…Both the Union and the Confederacy reaped what many described as a ‘harvest of death.’ By the midpoint of the conflict, it seemed that in the South, ‘Nearly every household mourns some loved one lost.’ Loss became commonplace; death was no longer encountered individually. Death’s threat, proximity, and its actuality became the most widely shared experience of the war’s duration.”
Approximately one million Springfield .58 caliber rifles with a 40-inch-long barrel were manufactured during the Civil War; experienced soldiers could fire two to four rounds a minute at an aimed distance of 1500 feet. The problem was soldiers on both sides lacked training and marksmanship. While rarely used during the War, bayonets killed about one percent of combatants.
The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech has explained:
Severe damage to arms and legs made amputation [using chloroform or ether as anesthesia] the treatment of choice in such cases. However, most wounds were not so severe and did not require amputation. Far more surgeries consisted of cleaning and stitching wounds, as well as removing bullets and bone fragments. Out of 174,206 known wounds of the extremities treated by Union surgeons, nearly 30,000 wounded soldiers had amputations with approximately a twenty-seven percent fatality rate.
Nonetheless, because doctors were unaware of the role of bacteria in causing infection, serious complications occurred frequently and soldiers who survived amputations experienced significant – sometimes “phantom” – post-surgical pain. Some wounds never fully healed, secreting pus for years or occasionally discharging bone fragments.
On January 1, 2023, the American population was 334,233,854. In 2021 (the latest data available), the total number of guns produced for the U.S. market reached 474 million, although the number in actual circulation is lower due to attrition, but by how many remains unclear.
On May 6, the United States experienced its 199th mass shooting of 2023, making it yet another incident in which a gunman chose to use an AR-15-style rifle – described as “the most popular rifle in America” by the National Rifle Association. According to a Washington Post-Ipsos study, at least ten of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in America involved an AR-15 style rifle. One in twenty Americans owns at least one of these military style weapons, with thirty-three percent claiming they have the weapon for self-defense and protection of family and home and 56 percent in the 40- to 64-years-old age range. Sixty-seven percent of AR-15 owners do not hold a college degree, while 41 percent reported a Republican party affiliation, 10 percent self-reported as Democrats and 46 percent as Independents. “The data suggests that with a U.S. population of 260.8 million adults, abut 16 million Americans own an AR-15…”
A standard semi-automatic AR15 can fire up to 45 rounds per minute, allowing the user to adjust and compensate for target person’s center mass as they are firing. While there’s a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive and significant fees to be contended with in obtaining a fully automatic long gun in the United States, they are capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute – depending on a wide range of adjustments or “add-on” features.
In the end, whether you call it “America’s rifle” or a “weapon of war,” what is important is what assault rifles do to the human body.
The AR-15 fires bullets at such a high velocity — often in a barrage of 30 or even 100 in rapid succession — that it can eviscerate multiple people in seconds. A single bullet lands with a shock wave intense enough to blow apart a skull and demolish vital organs. The impact is even more acute on the compact body of a small child.
“It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” said Joseph Sakran, a gunshot survivor who advocates for gun violence prevention and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
During surgery on people shot with high-velocity rounds, he said, body tissue “literally just crumbled into your hands.”
So, what can Americans expect in the aftermath of another “revolution” or “civil” war? Speaking to members of the United States Houe of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee on June 8, 2022 in the aftermath of the May 24 mass murder of school children in Uvalde, Texas Dr. Roy Guerrero testified:
“I was called here today as a witness, but I showed up because I am a doctor, because… I swore an oath — an oath to do no harm. After witnessing firsthand the carnage in my hometown of Uvalde, to stay silent would have betrayed that oath,"
In the surgical area of the hospital, Guerrero said he saw things that "no prayer will ever relieve."
"Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart. That the only clue as to their identities was blood-splattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them, clinging for life and finding none.
“I could only hope these two bodies were a tragic exception to the list of survivors. But as I waited there with my fellow Uvalde doctors, nurses, first responders, and hospital staff for other casualties we hoped to save — they never arrived. All that remained was the bodies of 17 more children and the two teachers who cared for them."
That will be the picture of the next “revolution” or “un-civil war” in the United States.
In his novel The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane noted that, after battle, “There was much blood upon the grass blades” and recounted a wounded soldier calling down “the pestilential wrath of strange gods.”
Remember, when you hear politicians and cowardly commentators calling for “civil war” and a new American “revolution” or invoking macho images of drawing down their guns, they are really calling for “much blood upon the grass” and “the pestilential wrath of strange gods.”
[An Editors’ Plea: Whether you agree with us or not, whether you wish us well or not, we implore you to prayerfully read “The Blast Effect: This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart” at What does an AR-15 do to a human body? A visual examination of the deadly damage. - Washington Post]