The South’s Challenge
The Confederacy’s vast geographic expanse made it difficult for the enemy to occupy and conquer. At
the same time, the South’s straightforward war goal of independence gave it greater domestic unity
than the North, which wrestled internally with the question of emancipation’s proper place in the war.
SECESSION TRIGGERS WAR 1861T
he long and destructive nature of
the Civil War, combined with the
immense stakes involved—the fate
of the old Federal Union, the existence
of the Confederate nation, and the status
of slavery—made it a war of mass
mobilization in both sections. Both sides
had to find the human, material, and
technological resources for waging a war
at a time of rapid industrialization, with
its railroads, mass-produced weapons
and equipment, and comparatively new
technologies. Although the North
possessed more of all of these things,
the Confederate cause was by no means
hopeless and doomed.A well-resourced enemy
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 ofBEFORE
The Southern economy relied heavily on
cotton exports, mostly to Britain. Before the
war, these had earned large amounts of
hard currency. However, the dominance of
cotton-growing ❮❮ 22–23 suppressed the
South’s industrial capacity.
RISING PRODUCTION
Boosted by Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton
gin for separating the fibers from the seeds
❮❮ 16–17, Southern cotton production
soared during the 19th century. From 720,000
bales in 1830, it rose to 2.85 million bales in
1850 and was still rising at the outbreak of the
Civil War. By then, the slave plantations of the
South were the source of 75 percent of the
world’s commercially grown cotton.
FAILED DIPLOMACY
The Confederates hoped that “King Cotton”
diplomacy would force Britain to intervene on
their behalf because, without Southern cotton,
British textile mills would be idle. They
underestimated the strength of British
anti-slavery sentiment and the ability of
British industrialists to find alternative sources of
cotton in India, Egypt, and Argentina. Hopes of
French intervention were similarly dashed.
Southern charm
For many, life in the prewar South was secure and
prosperous—a quality captured by German artist
Edward Beyer in his view of Salem,
Virginia, painted in 1855.
General Josiah Gorgas
At the start of hostilities, Gorgas was
commander of the U.S. Army arsenal at
Frankford, near Philadelphia. He
resigned to join the Confederates.economic and human
resources shows their
advantages. In 1860,
the North possessed
most of the country’s
manufacturing
capacity, including
97 percent of
firearms production.
Altogether it had
110,000
manufacturing
enterprises and
1.3 million industrial
workers. The future
Confederacy could count
only 18,000 factories
employing 110,000 individuals. These
Southern factories, however, did
include the Tredegar Iron Works in
Richmond, Virginia, one of the few
places capable of providing theConfederacy with
heavy ordnance.
During the war, the
task of trying to make
up for this industrial
imbalance fell to the
Confederacy’s ever-
resourceful ordnance
chief, General Josiah Gorgas.
The Union also had twice the
density of railroads per square
mile; the future Confederate states
produced only 19 of 470 locomotives
manufactured that year. In terms of
population, the Union had 20.7 million
people, against the Confederacy’s