American Civil War For Dummies. Keith D. Dickson
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5-1 for the major resources of the Union and the Confederacy (excluding the Border States) in 1861. Without making too much of these statistics, some points need to be made. At first glance, the manpower resources of the North appear dominant. In actuality, the South had a slight strategic advantage. As an industrial society, a significant proportion of the North’s manpower was tied up in the factories. Also, many farmers needed to remain home to produce food, further cutting into the manpower pool. The three and a half million slaves in the South, a predominantly agricultural society, allowed white Southerners to serve in the army in far greater numbers, proportionately, than Northerners.
TABLE 5-1: Distribution of Major War Resources
| North | South | |
|---|---|---|
| Population | ||
| 18.5 | 5.5 million 3.5 million (slaves) | |
| Agricultural | ||
| Corn | 396 | 280 millions of bushels |
| Wheat | 114 | 31 millions of bushels |
| Oats | 138 | 20 millions of bushels |
| Cotton | 0 | 5 million bales |
| Tobacco | 58 | 199 million pounds |
| Rice | 0 | 187 million pounds |
| Animal Resources | ||
| Mules | 330 | 800 thousand |
| Cows | 5 | 2.7 million |
| Beef Cattle | 5.4 | 7 million |
| Sheep | 14 | 5 million |
| Hogs | 11.3 | 15.5 million |
| Industrial Capacity | ||
| Railroad Mileage | 20 | 9 thousand track miles |
| Number of Factories | 100.5 | 20.6 thousand |
| Skilled Workers | 1.1 million | 111 thousand |
| Financial | ||
| Bank Deposits | $189 million | $47 million |
| Gold/Silver on Hand | $45 million | $27 million |
Clearly the Union had all the advantages in the areas of railroad mileage, manufacturing, and finance. Railroads became a strategic asset quickly in this war to gain the advantage over the enemy. For the first time in history, men and equipment in wartime were moved across long distances by rail. Railroads also moved supplies to the armies and raw materials to factories. They became the lifeline of modern war. Do not get the idea that just because the North had more advantages than the South that the war was a predetermined victory. If that were the case, the war would have been over very quickly. Remember, these advantages do not by themselves determine victory. It is how well they are used to support the war’s ultimate goal that makes these resources decisive. The South used its fewer resources more efficiently than the North at first, giving the Confederacy an initial advantage. It took the Union far longer to harness its resources and apply them to the war effort.
Wartime Strategy: Union and Confederate
As the political leaders of each nation had made their determination to move toward war, they now had to huddle with their military advisors and determine how the military strategy would be shaped to support the overall political goals each president had defined for his nation.
The Union’s strategy
Based on the political objectives and the assessment of its resources, the Union had a simple military strategy: divide and conquer. Union armies would have to invade the Confederacy, split it in half, and capture and control its territory. General Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the U.S. Army, developed what was termed “the Anaconda Plan.” His strategy for defeating the Confederacy contained three objectives. The first goal of the strategy was to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, only 100 miles from Washington, D.C. The second goal was to strangle the Confederacy through the use of a blockade. This blockade would employ the U.S. Navy in a cordon around the 3,500-mile coastline of the Confederacy to prevent any seaborne commerce from entering or leaving Southern ports. The third part of the strategy was to advance down the Mississippi River, cut the Confederacy in half, and defeat its armies. It all looked good on paper, but the prospects of achieving these three goals were daunting.
The Confederacy’s strategy
Confederate military strategy can be stated in far simpler terms — survive. To win, the Union had to invade and attack Confederate resources and its military strength. By remaining on the strategic defensive, inflicting heavy losses on invading enemy armies, and protecting its critical weak points, the Confederacy could conserve its limited resources and simply hold out until the Union leaders gave up. If the Union did not give up easily, the Confederacy included as part of its strategy a plan to end the war through the intervention of a major European power on the Confederacy’s behalf. This scenario may sound familiar. It is the same strategy that won the 13 colonies their independence from Great Britain in the American Revolution, when France entered into an alliance with the Americans. Another option was to gain a decisive victory on the battlefield that would convince the Union to seek peace, or convince the Europeans that the Confederacy had the capability to survive as an independent country.
Geography and Strategy: Theaters of War
In formulating these two strategies for the Union and the Confederacy, geography played an important role. The Confederacy’s land area of 750,000 square miles roughly equaled that of Europe, minus the Scandinavian countries. This is a huge area of land — extremely difficult to conquer and equally difficult to defend with limited resources. Geography in