Since computers became widely available in the 1970s, Civil War historians
have increasingly used sources that were only occasionally consulted before
the 1970s -- e.g., manuscript U.S. Census records, the Compiled Service
Records of Civil War soldiers, state tax records, etc. Computers allow
scholars to gather huge amounts of data from those sources and manipulate
the data to make measurements for large numbers of soldiers, much larger
than possible before computers came into widespread use. Thus, we are able
to learn more about the men in the ranks, to look at history "from the
bottom up" rather than from the top down (i.e., older views of the war
exclusively from the perspective of presidents, senators, generals, etc.).
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= Richard Lowe =
= U. of North Texas =
= fd78@vaxb.acs.unt.edu =
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