Civil War

Civil War Notes

By Madison Nef

Upon first inspection, it would appear that the North had a clear upper hand with many advantages in almost every category to secure a victory against the South. The writings from this time period have been extremely helpful today in identifying how things were, and most of them claimed that the South was fighting a glorious but rather pointless and failing battle for an independence that would never exist.

To be honest, important resources were just about equally split between both of the sides. In this lecture, we got a bit of an in-depth look at these resources and the point that the battle’s fate was not predetermined was the main lesson to be learned. Below, I’ve gone through some of these strong points for each side; AND given a little about what happened.

The North

*The North almost lost TWICE just due to the Confederacy trying to convince them that the battle they were fighting was too costly, both in human lives AND money.  

·        More manpower, with a 5:2 ratio compared to the South. The North had a population of 22.5 million, which was gigantic compared to the South’s 9.1 million; 3.5 million of which were black… and of those 3.5 million, only about 130,000 were free. The North called upon their large population, especially on both white and black males who had never supported slavery to begin with.

·        A bigger economy was also to the North’s advantage. 110,000 businesses that employed 1.3 million people was what the North had- compared to the South’s decreasing 18,000 businesses that employed roughly 100,000 workers. This meant that the North had more businesses running… than the North had working in the businesses they owned.

·        The North ALSO controlled far more of the railroads, if you remember from an earlier report. This was a GIGANTIC advantage- they owned about 22 thousand miles worth of track, while the Confederacy only had about 9 thousand. Due to such easy access to fast transportation, trading and production of goods in the North flourished with the sales of iron, ships, textiles, animals, and weapons that the South could not compete with.

·        Finally, the North had a large professional army and navy to start the war with… though this did not prove as useful as you may think. The US army itself had a grand total of 15,000 fighters, and these were spread out across the continent… most were to the west of Mississippi. The Navy had only 42 working vessels, and even so was not much help as they were not trained for riverside fighting.

The South

*The South was clearly the weaker force in the battle, yet still believed they could win simply by debunking their enemies’ morals.

·        Being defensive of their own turf served as an advantage for the South due to the fact that the side protecting its home was often perceived as the more dedicated and motivated side.

·        Geography was also helpful. The size of the Confederacy ranged about 750,000 miles with 3,500 of those being coastline. This posed as both a threat AND a problem to the US army. It also helped that the Confederates knew their own roads and trails a LOT better than the North- by staying inside their own bounds, they also got rid of the risk of getting lost.

·        Access to the South was easy- at least by boat; which was good since the US Navy weren’t very skilled with smaller bodies of water. More than 200 mouths of rivers and bays gave complete access to the South, but it was relatively safe. The Appalachian mountains also stood in the way of the North- quite a discouraging trip.

·        After the mountains came the Shenandoah Valley- which was good shelter and good for enclosed military action.

·        Finally, the LACK of transportation in the South also served as an advantage because it confused the US army some and it was harder for them to move as fast as they were used to.

So you see, both sides had their own advantages. In this lecture, the disadvantages were not discussed… but I personally can’t wait to see what inconvenienced these armies too. In the next lecture, all the disadvantages will be discussed and then I’ll add them on as a ‘Part 2’ to this paper.

I think what surprised me most was the fact that the lack of transportation served the South as an advantage. I mean; it makes sense when you think about it… but looking at it from the side that had access to easy transportation, they probably only saw it as a disadvantage, not realizing that it slowed them down considerably. I guess it just goes to show that the quickest route… is not always the best one.

~Maddie