A View from My Porch: America’s Quarter Millennium – The Human Cost of Independence

This is the final View in my series on the Declaration of Independence, America’s birth certificate as a sovereign nation. Last time, I reviewed the remarkable 109 days that began with the expulsion of the British occupying force from Boston by the Continental Army under the command of Gen. George Washington, and continued through the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Independence by the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 after which Mad King George III became the final king of America and Congress turned its attention to the war with Britain. As commander in chief of the Continental Army, George Washington realized that America was fighting a war on two fronts: the first for independence from the British, and the second for survival against smallpox.

America’s victory over the British came at a high price and I consider the human cost of the Revolutionary War in this View.

The “Speckled Monster”: Outbreaks of smallpox were widespread during the Revolutionary War and especially deadly in populations and individuals with no past history of infection or prior contact with the pathogen, the variola virus. The North American Smallpox Epidemic of 1775 to 1782 is estimated to have killed about 130,000 across the continent, both soldiers and civilians, with the death toll for civilians approaching 100,000. Mortality rates ranged from 30 to 50 percent and above 80 percent for children. Smallpox had no cure, but those who survived the infection would have long-term immunity to further infection, which is known as natural immunity. A vaccine for smallpox would be developed in 1796 by British physician Edward Jenner, but until then, 18th-century Americans had two weapons against the disease: isolation or inoculation. Isolation, or quarantine, simply means restricting contact between sick individuals and those who were still vulnerable. The second weapon, inoculation, was the deliberate infection of a vulnerable individual with the pathogen, usually through an incision on the arm or hand, and the application of ground smallpox scabs or pus to the wound. Those inoculated typically came down with a less virulent, yet still harrowing form of the disease than “naturally acquired” smallpox, and when recovered, would still have long-lasting immunity to future smallpox infections. There was a catch, however. Because inoculated individuals did contract the disease, they stayed infectious for weeks, and so, unless followed under strict isolation, the procedure was as likely to start an epidemic as to end one.

General Washington’s Campaign against Smallpox: Early in the War, American forces suffered significant loss of life from smallpox after the successful siege of Boston and the retreat from the failed siege of Quebec, which provided a clear signal to Washington that smallpox could compromise the war effort. Soldiers in the Continental Army who contracted smallpox were often rendered unfit for battle. The Continental Army was at a disadvantage to the British, who were protected by a higher rate of natural immunity because of the higher incidence of exposure to the disease in crowded England, versus the much more dispersed population of the Colonies. Also, the British had a policy of inoculating army recruits. Washington’s dilemma was that while American civilians could be inoculated against the disease, the practice was banned in the Continental Army because leaders feared that soldiers would be sick and unsuitable for combat for weeks after inoculation and, even worse, could spread the disease to their comrades. Although inoculation was controversial, Washington feared the disease more than the British army, and on February 6, 1777, he authorized the mandatory inoculation of all Continental soldiers against smallpox, instructing Dr. William Shippen Jr., his de facto chief medical officer, to begin inoculating recruits in Philadelphia. Washington had already communicated with John Hancock, then president of the Second Continental Congress, regarding the necessity of the inoculations. It’s worth noting that Washington did not simply order the inoculation of the troops without any safeguards, but he also implemented quarantine and isolation procedures to manage the risks of spreading smallpox. This critical decision protected the Continental Army from devastating outbreaks, particularly during campaigns in 1777 and 1778. Many historians credit the medical mandate with the Colonists’ victory in the Revolutionary War.

The Toll of Independence: Historian Howard Peckham and his team conducted a comprehensive review of Revolutionary War-era documents, military correspondence, and dispatches retrieved from state and federal archives, historical societies and regimental records, and chronicled combat deaths that occurred across 1,331 military engagements and 215 naval engagements. Peckham estimated that 25,534 American soldiers perished over the eight years of the war. Of those, only 8,624 were killed in battle. There are other sources that claim that 4,435 American soldiers were killed in battle, and both the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs have cited this lower number although it is now generally considered to be inaccurate. Peckham’s study is generally considered the most accurate accounting of Revolutionary War deaths. Peckham estimated that another 10,000 died from diseases that spread through Continental Army camps. Soldiers returning to camp after battle were exposed to conditions that may have been as much a threat to survival as the muskets, cannon balls, and sabers encountered on the battlefield. Poor sanitation was a persistent and deadly factor, especially in the larger encampments. Rations were inadequate and drinking water was often contaminated. Soldiers ordinarily lived in canvas or linen tents that provided limited protection from rain, snow, and cold. The lower ranks may have slept six or eight to a tent, directly on the ground or on straw-covered mud. Moreover, while smallpox was the most devastating disease of the war, yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, typhus and pneumonia also significantly impacted American forces.

Peckham estimated that 8,500 perished as captives on British prison ships where captured Americans were treated as traitors and jammed below decks. Andrew M. Schocket, Ph.D., professor of history at Bowling Green State University, stated that “being captured by the British proved to be a death sentence,” and described the floating prisons as “petri dishes of disease.”

In contrast, an August, 3, 2023 article in the New York Almanack regarding the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn specified that the monument memorialized the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died in captivity aboard British prison ships. It was based on the prisoners’ skeletal remains that were first gathered and interred in 1808. The estimate was first widely circulated in the 1800s, when efforts were made to collect and inter the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

Significant Losses for a Small Population: In raw numbers, Peckham’s estimate of 25,534 American military deaths may not seem that high when compared to the 500,000 who died on the Union and Confederate sides in the Civil War, and is far lower than the American deaths in any of the wars of the twentieth century, according to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs figures. However, because the population of the Thirteen Colonies was about 2.5 million in 1776, the loss of 25,000 men had an outsized impact on American society because the war’s toll left a shortage of young males to work on farms in this new nation, where agriculture was the dominant industry. To put this into a modern perspective, this would be like losing one percent of the current U.S. population, nearly 3.5 million people. 

About the author: Tom Gotowka spent his career in healthcare. He will sit on the Navy side at the Army/Navy football game. He always sit on the crimson side at any Harvard/Yale contest. He enjoys reading historic speeches and considers himself a scholar of the period from FDR through JFK. A child of AM Radio, he probably knows the lyrics of every rock and roll or folk song published since 1960.