Civil war in America was inevitable from the beginning. A country can not partake in slavery without an uproar. Tensions were high between the north and the south already because of their different ways of life. The north focused on mass production whereas the south’s biggest trade was agriculture. Slavery allowed the south to prosper, their whole economy was based off of it. Though change was inevitable two documents that sped up the war process were the Fugitive Slave Act and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.…
In Why the North Won the Civil War, Henry Steele Commager believed that there were multiple causes that led the confederacy to their defeat and that it was “an inevitability in history.” While many historians believed the North won due to their economic, military, diplomatic, and social aspects, Richard N. Current stated that the Union won the Civil War due to their “fundamental economic superiority.” He believed the North sustained a vast and overwhelming economic superiority in men and materials, giving them “an advantage of almost five to two” in everything. The Union succeeded because they were productive with their economy, unlike the Confederates.…
First off, the construction of railroads played a role in faster troop and supply transportation. More than 70% of the nation’s rail lines were in the North. The rail lines provided much faster transportation than the South possessed. As you can see in picture 4, the construction of railroads was a major duty in the North. Next off, the Union occupied better artillery such as cannons. Northern factories made 97% of the nation's firearms. Cannons played a major role in the the civil war. Some of the cannons used by Union and Confederate forces include the Howitzer, the Parrot rifle, and the small Ordnance rifle. Some examples are in pictures 5, 9, 10, and 12. Lastly, the use of pontoon bridges gave the North a great advantage. These bridges provided for…
In order to win the war, the Union had to think smart and play it to their advantage. In the book The Civil War: A Visual History, author John E. Stanchak declared, “During the 19th century, the new era of rail and steam that marked the Industrial Revolution was centered in the Northern states, and a summary of economics and human resources shows their advantages” (Stanchak 54). The North had a lot of railroads which helped them travel faster. They also had more money and organizations than the South. These advantages boosted them further into victory.…
Despite the North having more production and population, the South could have won the Civil War with a few adjustments. Notice how the South’s largest production is cotton, compared to the North. The North had a balance of different types of production, which enabled the soldiers to be easily equipped with materials and accumulate wealth. One of the major reasons why the South lost was that it spent more on cotton production instead of increasing the other types of production. If it spent more on the different types, it could have won. The South depended heavily on agricultural type of labor, through the use of slaves. The slave owners did not free the slaves, since they were needed to cultivate the cotton to raise profit for the owners. Moreover,…
The North won the Civil War because they had many advantages including a large population, more advanced transportation, and a better war strategy. “It could draw soldiers and workers from a population of 22 million, compared with the South’s 5.5 million” (William Deverell and Deborah Gray White, United States History: Independence to 1914, California Edition, pp. 474-5). A larger population meant more people to fight in the war, which gave the Union a better chance of winning. On the other hand, the South approximately had one-fourth of the North’s population, and as a result they lost the war.…
With a shortage of supplies due to lack of industrial bases, the South suffered greatly in the Civil War, ultimately causing their loss. The North’s ability to bring its industry to manufacture supplies allowed it to gain and maintain its dominance over the South. The South, having just 20,000 factories, was no competition for the North, which had 105,000 factories. However, the South at one point did have an opportunity to gain more supplies through foreign aid, which might have caused the Civil War to have a different outcome if the South would have received that aid. Britain and France were willing to give the South money, food, drugs, weapons, and many more supplies. However, the South practiced the institution of slavery, which prevented European aid. Because the middle-classes of France and Britain were against the “peculiar institution”, they chose to side with the North, rather than the South. The South’s deficiency of materials ultimately caused them to lose the Civil War because they were often not prepared for battles and did not have the necessary supplies to compete with the North’s numerous weapons from their large industries.…
The Union had a significantly larger population than the Confederacy. The Union had a population over 22 million people while the Confederacy had 9 million. The Union had a well organized government. The government was already establishment and experienced. They had an easier…
These strengths included the Southern military tradition, the lack of urbanisation in the South and the physical vastness of the Confederacy. The Southern military tradition meant that the Confederate army had many professional officers, as well as the Southern militias providing many well-trained men. The lack of urbanisation in the South caused Richmond and New Orleans to be the two main targets. This was advantageous for the Confederacy because New Orleans was on the southern coast, leading to the physical vastness of the CSA aiding its defences. This links to the changing nature of warfare, because the strengths of the CSA were better fitted to the old style of warfare of decisive battle and so the North took four years to win whilst they had not turned to the strategy of war of attrition under Grant. This factor is the least important out of the four, because the strengths of the USA outweighed the strengths of the CSA.…
One of the most interesting questions in America is was the Civil War Inevitable. Could the North and South resolved their differences another way? Yes, if the federal government allowed the states to do whatever they wished and if the North and South did not care about each other the war would’ve never happened. The Heart of the conflict was that the states were originally independent.…
Northern States relied on manufacturing as their main source of income. “The North had more States and more population.”(Bibliography source #1) They were also much more advanced as…
The North was industrialized and had many factories. It also included railroad tracks of more than 20,000 miles. The railroad transferred settlers, manufactured goods, wheat, and raw materials. On the other hand, the South was very agricultural, consisted of many plantations and small farms. The North was far more advanced in the technological field. Because of its industrial environment, most immigrants settled in the North. As a result, the North's population grew much faster. Only a small number of immigrants settled in the South because there were not enough jobs available due to slavery. These differences show that the North and the South were not united even before the Civil War.…
The Civil War was fought between the Northern and Southern states of of America. Was the Civil War inevitable? It was a conflict bound to happen due to the differences between the North and South’s views on slavery, society, and politics. The South wanted their independence and freedom from the North, while the North wanted unity.…
Although the railroad was not used for the first time during the Civil War, but a few years earlier in the 1830s, it was still important to transport the Union soldiers and supplies to and from the battlefield. In the middle of the 1800s the railroad was used in the North as a means to expand, trade, and transport factory goods throughout the country. On the contrary, the South just saw the railroad as a way to transport slave produced raw materials such as cotton to the ports to be traded. According to Robert C. Black III, “the relative increase in railroad mileage between 1850 and 1860 was some what greater in the South than in the North” (2). Although the South had many miles laid, “the construction boom had not yet produced in the Southern States a system of iron rails” (Black 8). For lack of this “system,” when a shipment of materials had to be transported long distances by rail in the South, the materials would have to be switched between rail cars to support the difference in track sizes and moving across land where no track existed. In other words, “[e]verywhere through Dixie railroads were stretching iron fingers toward one another, but not yet everywhere had they joined hands” (Black 9). Although the North did not lay down as many rail roads as the South during the few years before the Civil War, the North’s railroads had a and connectivity, which allowed for greater use and cost…
Many outside factors were believed to affect the Civil War's outcome; everything from clothing, weather conditions, weapons, and food. The factor that most affected the war's outcome was the food. The North had a great amount and variety of food. The South's food started off the same way, but it quickly deteriorated. The southern soldiers began to pillage farms to find food they wanted or the soldiers would desert and go home while they would have food. These were factors that could have been prevented.…