chance that either Britain or France would enter the war. Historian Don Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on the course of world history. The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues that: Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South. The prevailing view is that the southern planter elite retained its powerful position in the South. However, a 2017 study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their economic status, the turmoil of the 1860s created greater opportunities for economic mobility in the South than in the North. Casualties The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease—and 50,000 civilians. Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000. A novel way of calculating casualties by looking at the deviation of the death rate of men of fighting age from the norm through analysis of census data found that at least 627,000 and at most 888,000 people, but most likely 761,000 people, died in the war. As historian McPherson notes, the war's "cost in American lives was as great as in all of the nation's other wars combined through Vietnam." Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South. About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War. An estimated 60,000 soldiers lost limbs in the war. Of the 359,528 Union army dead, amounting to 15 percent of the over two million who served: 110,070 were killed in action (67,000) or died of wounds (43,000). 199,790 died of disease (75 percent was due to the war, the remainder would have occurred in civilian life anyway) 24,866 died in Confederate prison camps 9,058 were killed by accidents or drowning 15,741 other/unknown deaths In addition there were 4,523 deaths in the Navy (2,112 in battle) and 460 in the Marines (148 in battle). Black troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll — 15 percent of Union deaths