The North was overwhelmingly rural but still had a much greater industrial capacity than the South. It had ten times its productive capacity and six times as many factories. The North contained twice as many miles of railway track as the South and even in agriculture enjoyed an edge, producing over 80% of the countries wheat and oats. The North’s booming war economy was able to produce ‘guns and ‘butter’ and the Northern economy was generally more prepared for a war. Reforms were also introduced to help aid agriculture and industry. The fact that the North were industrially better prepared to fight and win the war was a very important advantage.
The North was also aided by four slave states (containing some 2,000,000 people), remaining loyal to the Union. Delaware was never likely to succeed, but the fact that Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri did not declare wholeheartedly for the Confederacy was crucial. The three states would have added 45% to the Confederacy’s white population and 80% to its manufacturing capacity. Another advantage the North had was that the people in the eleven Confederate states were not all committed to the Confederate cause, and in many of these states pockets of Unionism existed.
However bigger armies do sometimes lose wars, and in many respects the South was better prepared to fight and win the war than the North in 1861. Southerners and most European observers believed the Confederacy would win, and if Northern morale had collapsed then the Union could have been defeated.
The sheer size of the Confederacy- 750,000 square miles- was perhaps its greatest aspect. It would be difficult to conquer and blockade this amount of space, and even if the North did succeed in occupying Confederate territory they would find it difficult to hold down a resentful population and maintain their supply lines. The Confederacy could trade space for time and wear down the Northern will to fight. After all, the Confederacy did not have to invade the North, only defend the South. This is always an easier option in war. Some of the terrain found in the South also gave the Confederacy an advantage. These were the key Confederate advantages and made it a lot easier for the Confederacy to wage war, and made them more prepared to fight and succeed.
Geography also meant the Confederacy was more prepared to contest and win the war. The main war theatre had a series of west to east running rivers flowing through it, making an effective natural barrier against Union armies. The Shenandoah valley was also a Confederate advantage. Federal forces using the valley were forced to march away from Richmond, the Confederates on the other hand could use the valley for striking into the heart of the North.
The South also had better interior lines of Communications due to the fact that the war was being fought on Confederate soil. This meant Confederate commanders could concentrate their dispersed forces more effectively, using manpower to maximum effect. Slavery was also a benefit, as slaves could fill production needs on the home front, enabling more white men to fight. Although an advantage these reasons did not really effect how prepared the Confederacy was to fight and win a war.
The South did however have important psychological advantages. Most of the war was fought on Confederate soil, where soldiers were protecting their homeland, whereas Northerners were only fighting for the more abstract idea of reunion. Morale, commitment and enthusiasm were high and most Southerners also believed they were better soldiers than the North. They believed they were a ‘military people’, and seven out of the eight military colleges in the US were in slave states, with the elite of the nation’s generals being Southern. Morale was genuinely something that made the South more prepared to win the Civil War, even if it was only a small advantage.
The South did however have to build its Government from scratch. This was a major disadvantage, and made it harder for the Southern government to run the war. They did not necessarily make many mistakes however, and Davis’s government was no more mistake prone than Lincoln’s. The Southern government simply had less room for error, which makes life harder when your government infrastructure has only just been put in place. Towards the end of the war there was an understandable loss of faith in the Confederate leadership, and many Southerners decided the price of independence was just too high. The Confederacy also had to start its military organisation from scratch. The 300 or so Southern officers who resigned from the regular army to fight for the Confederacy were useful, and although state militia units were often better trained in the South, the Confederacy had problems equipping all of its volunteers. The lack of government and military infrastructure was a large disadvantage and made the South a lot less prepared for war.
Another disadvantage was the fact that the South relied on foreign imports and improvements to expand its military infrastructure. In 1861 the South believed ‘King Cotton’ was the Confederacy’s great economic weapon, enabling the Confederacy to purchase weapons and supplies. They also believed that Britain and maybe other European nations would intervene on there behalf. However as the war went on it was clear Britain would stay neutral, and that the South would find it difficult to raise money for the war effort, as it could sell relatively little cotton due to the blockade.
The North was better prepared to fight and win the civil war at its outbreak in 1861. It had much greater industrial capacity, much larger manpower and a government infrastructure already in place. It had a much larger railway system and a better equipped army and navy. It was not entirely better prepared than the South however, who still had many advantages over their bigger adversary. The South had a geographical advantage, with the huge scale of the Confederacy perhaps being their greatest asset, allowing them to trade space for time. They were also better prepared in the aspect of aims and strategy. They only had to defend and outlast the Union, not attack and beat it. The South also had a physiological advantage. Ultimately, given its smaller battalions, the South needed to have better leadership, greater financial and economic initiative and more unity than its stronger adversary if it was to fight and win the war. In due course the North was better prepared to fight and win the Civil War in 1861, but only to a certain extent.
