President Jefferson Davis (above) and his Confederate armies, from Vicksburg to the March to the Sea, could only watch as Southern civilians were forced to endure 'total war.' Visit the Photo Place

Economics, changing warfare affect outcome

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By Ned Harrison

Date published: 10/20/2005

Part 2 of a series

OF ALL THE reasons historians mention when discussing why and how the Con- federacy lost the Civil War, the general economic conditions of the two sides is high on the list. Just imagine the differences: in population alone (and whatever the war, it is always fought by men on the ground; run out of men, you lose the war) the North had roughly 22,000,000 citizens; the Confederacy had some 9,000,000, and 3,500,000 of these were slaves.

The North had a much larger manufacturing capability, and 92 percent of all factory workers were in the North. The state of Massachusetts alone had a greater industrial base than the entire South. Northern factories produced 91 percent of all the textiles made in the United States, a vital component of uniforms and tents for housing troops in the field.

The North had a greater supply of raw materials: 94 percent of the iron that made the steam engines and rail lines, and 97 percent of the coal which fed the steam engines that provided power to those trains. In rail lines alone, the United States in 1860 had 31,000 miles of rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined. But 22,000 miles of those lines were in the North, woven together into an integrated rail system in which four lines linked cities on the Atlantic Ocean with cities on the upper Mississippi River--and all the towns in between.

Southern rail lines, by contrast, in many cases went from the interior of a state to the nearest seaport; there was little interest in an integrated rail system to connect the major cities. For example, there was no direct connection between New Orleans, the biggest city in the South, and Atlanta, a major rail hub in Georgia. And there was only one rail line across the Mississippi River connecting Texas, a huge source of food and cattle and horses during the war, with the rest of the South.

The one area in which the South was far ahead of the North was in cotton production; the South produced 96 percent of all cotton in the United States. More on that later.

Date published: 10/20/2005