“It ran the whole gamut,” Purser says.

The study also found that:

• About 2,000 African American and white Tar Heels died in the Union army.
• No North Carolina women died in the military during the war, although some did disguise themselves as men to serve.
• No African American died serving in North Carolina’s Confederate ranks, although some historians argue that blacks did fight for the South.

The study still supports the fact that one-third of the state’s men of military age died in the conflict.

“I don’t think it matters if it is 30,000 or 40,000,” Tom Belton, curator of military history and the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, says of the outcome. “It’s a significant number of North Carolinians who
gave their lives for a cause they thought was worth dying for.” "