Sunday, July 14, 2019

An estimated ten thousand men were killed weekly

From Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing by Kate Colquhoun. Page 110.
In America, Confederate troops were being driven back from Washington after marching so close that Mr Lincoln might hear the Southern cannon from the windows of the White House, as the New York Times reported. On American battlefields an estimated ten thousand men were killed weekly, but against those anonymous deaths, the murder of one elderly gentleman on a suburban railway line dominated the British press.
"The Civil War" is an abstract to a tapestry of knowledge. "An estimated ten thousand men were killed weekly" makes you reel. They are one and the same thing but we don't keep track of the full picture. It might be what keeps us from going crazy.

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