The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Back to That Facial Hair Thing...Again-- Part 1: The Beards of War

Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science "Beards of War: Relationship  between facial hair coverage and battle outcome in the U.S. Civil War" by Matt Michel.

I wrote about this last month (hit the facial hair label).

Using the Facial Hair Database from the previous post/paper and Battle Database from the National Park Service of the 383 battles and classifying the outcome as a Union Victory, Confederate Victory or Inconclusive and the 196 battles which have casualties listed, these stats became evident:

Long Bearded commanders were involved in the most battles: 54 for Union, 108 Confederate
Short Beards:  101 Union, 57 Confederate
Van Dykes:  39 Union, 46 Confederate
Mustaches:  32 Union, 20 Confederate
French Cuts:  20 Union, 31 Confederate
Clean Shaven:  12 Union, 25 Confederate
Friendly Muttonchop:  21 Union, 3 Confederate
Muttonchop:  6 Union, 11 Confederate
Chin Curtain:  11 Union, 3 Confederate
Muttonchop with mustache:  4 Union, 5 Confederate
Goatee:  0 Union, 7 Confederate

--Old Secesh

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