Abstract:
In 19th-century armies, disease often claimed more casualties than the battlefield. Johnston uses the Fifteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, which was the Provost Guard in New Bern in 1864, to show how disease can decimate a military unit. In this instance a rare outbreak of yellow fever killed 60 members of the regiment. In all, 303 Union soldiers died; the Fifteenth Connecticut accounted for 20 percent of them.