Question about Civil War Pocket Bible

Percentage wise you might be correct but in terms of total numbers the CSA would have had many more individuals who were illiterate.
I have always wondered if the percentages of literate northern soldiers was based on the availability of schools and not whether they were actually literate. My wife had a gr. gr. uncle from Belmont Co. Ohio whose pension forms were signed with an x and I had a cousin of a gr. gr. grandparent, also from Ohio, who couldn't sign his own name.
Just a thought.
 
I have always wondered if the percentages of literate northern soldiers was based on the availability of schools and not whether they were actually literate. My wife had a gr. gr. uncle from Belmont Co. Ohio whose pension forms were signed with an x and I had a cousin of a gr. gr. grandparent, also from Ohio, who couldn't sign his own name.
Just a thought.

I'd be surprised if some of the stats didn't come from the census. I think the 1860 census asked about literacy too, but University of Virginia's historic census browser lets you explore the 1870 census by literacy and some other demographics:
http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/start.php?year=V1870
Unfortunately, it lets you break down literacy quite well, but doesn't let you break down the total population the same way, so it's hard to compare apples-to-apples, say, illiterate white males over 21 compared to all white males over 21. But I'm sure someone has done those statistics.

As you noted, another way to figure it would be take a sample of enlistment forms for a particular regiment and see what percentage signed with an X, though that wouldn't show how many could read a little, or how many could only sign their name, but it would eliminate those who might have lied to the census taker, to hide their illiteracy. Looking at the numbers attending schools, based on local school records, would miss a lot of people in the south who were either taught by tutors or who attended a little subscription school that left no record, though numbers could be corroborated with the checkmarks for those attending school in the 1860 census.

Literacy of soldiers is discussed often enough that I suspect researchers have explored it from several directions, and hopefully they aren't all just copying Wiley's statistics from years ago.
 
If you want to see some Confederate soldier bibles, just goggle Confederate Soldier Bibles, and many pictures of them will come up.

"The American Bible Society was an organization that provided hundreds of thousands of Bibles, Testaments, and copies of the Lord's Prayer to Union soldiers. I even supplied Bibles to southern organizations servicing Rebel soldiers, including the Confederate Bible Society which had split from it. In the first 18 months of the war, the American Bible Society distributed 490,000 Bibles and Testaments. These were distributed to Union troops by the Christian Commission. The Bibles were often found on the bodies of those killed in action."
From: "The Language of the Civil War" by John D. Wright, page 9.
 
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