Washington the Traitor

I saw these arguments repeated many times before and they simply do not match with my understanding how Union eventually won the war?

Who has fed, clothed, armed, equipped, ferried all those hundreds of thousands of blue clad soldiers throughout four years?

Who has build the second most powerfull navy in the world in mere four years?

The 'agricultural society' I keep reading about on both ACW newsgroups?

Perhaps northern states were agricultural society compared with U.S. in 1890 or 1950, but in comparison with the southern confederation, north was _the industrial society_ south had no possibility to compete against in any reasonable time frame.

Or perhaps, people want to argue that Yankees had much better generals.

Well, in a way, both statements are true. It is true that the North was predominantly agricultural and that a minority (I wouldn't say small) were engaged in industry. What is left unsaid is that the South was almost *exclusively* agricultural. In the 1860s, even the most 'industrialized' nations had very little 'industry'. An amount greater than 'none at all' usually qualified a country as 'industrialized' in this era. The North may not have been heavily industrialized prior to 1860, but relative to the South, there was little comparison.

It's not so much that the North was an 'industrial society'. Predominantly, the North was engaged in agriculture, especially in the West. However, for the most part, it was commercial agriculture and not subsistance agriculture seen more commonlly in the yeomanry of the South. There were no huge factories or production lines in the North, and certainly no advanced military consumable production before the war. What the North *did* have was an industrial capacity. They had the raw material, extra man-power, and internal infrastructure to create a war economy. The South did not; if anything leading up to the war they were an 'anti-industrial society' In terms of capacity to create wartime consumables, at the beginning of the war the North and South were about even. Throw in that the South had to fight a defensive campaign over an area greater than that which Napolean had conquered, it was possible that the South could have developed the means to fight over a few years. But the South never really developed the wartime industries it needed during the four years while the North was throwing its potential into motion.

David Campbell

Please recall that I was responding to the following assertions from Richard L Hamer:

The claim that the North feared the South's slave-based industrial labor pool is completely absurd. Why? For the simple reason that the North had a tiny industrial workforce; the vast majority of its population were engaged in agriculture, not manufacturing. Moreover, the South had an even SMALLER industrial workforce than the North. There was nothing for the North to fear in the South's industrial capacity on any count.

To proceed to your points: The North's advantages were a larger population and economic base, overall better military leadership, and more effective political leadership. We might add that although the northern population was not really unified on the need to fight the war or the means by which it should be fought, neither was the southern population. These were the main ingredients of Union victory, not weight of armaments. The majority of casualties on both sides were due to disease and malnutrition, not weaponry. This was a constant reality of warfare up until WW1.

The only manufactured goods in your list are armaments. But armaments did not cause the majority of casualties in the Civil War! Rather, marching and overcrowding and disease and poor nutrition caused most casualties.

It wasn't built from nothing, however. It was already a capable navy prior to 1860. One should add that, in this period, being second best didn't get one very far, because there was noone who could compete with the best: the Royal Navy. This was true until the end of WW1 at the very earliest.

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Once again, I was responding to the claim that the North feared the South's enslaved workforce for its industrial potential. This is absolutely false. But it is equally false to refer to the Northern economy in the 1860s as 'industrial'. It simply was not, it was primarily agricultural.

I think that the Union did indeed have better overall military leadership. There seems to have been noone in the Confederate leadership who had a broad strategic view of the conflict, not even Lee (certainly not Davis, which hurt the Confederate cause immensely). And for every Lee, Jackson or Longstreet, the Confederacy still had a Polk, Bragg, Pemberton, etc.

Moreover this military leadership advantage was not purely operational or tactical, it was especially important logistically. As was apparent to Sherman and his men marching to Savannah and then up through the Carolinas, the Confederacy had generous amounts of food available. But due to a combination of poor planning, bad transportation and rampant corruption, they clearly could not get it to their fighting men in sufficient quantity or with sufficient speed.

* Nick Geovanis IT Computing Svcs Northwestern Univ

Thanks David,

This was my pick for 'Best of The Civil War Group' for this week.

It will be on my site http://www.thecivilwargroup.com till next week.

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:35:05 CST, 'David A. Campbell'