What was the general breakdown of casualties per their cause
during American Civil War? E.g. bullets vs. artillery vs. edged
weapons vs. disease vs. natural death. Did that breakdown change
in meaningful way between the beginning and the end of the war?
You can get a breakdown of the major causes of death here. Prior
to the 20th century (possibly late 19th), the dominant cause of
death in war was disease: the troops were in close quarters with
unsanitary conditions and inadequate means of handling these.
This number was followed by complications related to injuries
actually suffered in battle — frequently one would get a small
injury and it would get infected and kill the individual even
though it would be trivial to heal the wound in better
conditions. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a specific
breakdown of blade vs. bullet (and I suspect that it would be
impossible to do so), but I will say that, based on the
artillery technology of the time, it is fairly safe to say that
discerning the difference between