At the outset, the South seemed to have great advantages. First and foremost, Southerners were …show more content…
The South simply lacked the industrial base and the capital to fight a long, drawn-out, modern war. Major industrial areas within the Confederacy were limited to Richmond and Atlanta. In 1861, the seceded states were able to seize Federal arsenals and armories located within their borders. The combination of limited industrial resources and the seizure of Federal installations permitted the Confederacy to do a better-than-expected job of equipping and supplying its forces in the field. Nonetheless, the Confederacy was chronically short of just about every kind of material necessary to fight a war. On the eve of the conflict, the North controlled three-fourths of both the nation's wealth and the nation's railways. The South did have some railroads, but they were sparse and often of different gauges, making travel on them quite