The civil war was one of the bloodiest wars of all time and was fought by people from the same country. It's amazing to think that something like this could happen to this country. Approximately 260,000 Rebel soldiers and 373,000 Union soldiers were killed (Text, page 378). The reason for such a high number of deaths is mainly due to the fact that most of the battles of the war involved around 200,000 soldiers. With so many people fighting at the same time, there is bound to be a huge number of deaths. Another factor that explains the high number of deaths is the fact that new and better weapons were being developed. New technology has allowed weapons to be more precise and even more lethal. This, combined with the lack of medical care, made death in battle more likely than survival. Many soldiers could not get to the medics in time, and even when they arrived, many medics were not sufficiently trained. This is sad to see, but they needed all the “doctors” they could find. According to Alger, Cahan, and Gold, success usually consisted of trading rags for respectability, not great wealth (Text, p. 472). Most of Alger's stories tended to be glorified. Not many people have actually pulled it off like the characters in Alger have. Cahan provides a more realistic account of this theory of wealth, showing the spiritual loss that accompanies material gain. Gold tells even darker stories of people who simply can't "make it." These are all different views on the theory, but they all have truth behind them. Historians generally measured success by ranking occupations. Then they ask random questions and see which nationalities were most successful based on the job ranking. This is extremely inaccurate. First of all, there is no way that every nationality is equally represented in these polls. Some countries, or even some people, looking at the micro level, may judge success in different ways.