247
This Thomas Nast illustration
shows life for black Americans before
and after emancipation. Abraham
Lincoln is also portrayed.in January 1863, Lincoln felt
politically secure enough to order
the freeing of all Southern slaves.
But in the short term, the Civil War
was fought to keep this “great
promise” intact.Eventual Northern victory
The outcome of the American Civil
War was dictated ultimately by the
human and material discrepancies
between the North and the South.
There were 21 Union states with
a population of 20 million, and 11
Southern states with a population
of 9 million, 4 million of whom were
slaves, and therefore not allowed
to bear arms. Despite the fact that
by 1864, 44 percent of males in the
North between the ages of 18 and
60 were in military service, versus
90 percent in the Southern states,
the North was still able to enlist
2.2 million men over the whole war,
compared to the South’s 800,000.
The North was three times
richer than the South. It had 2.4
miles (3.8km) of railroad to every
1 mile (1.6km) in the South. Its
factories manufactured 10 times
more goods. It produced 20 timesmore iron than the South, 38 times
as much coal, and 32 times as many
firearms. The only area in which the
South exceeded the North was in
cotton production, at 24 to 1.
In the face of this superiority,
the fact that the South was not only
able to resist the Union forces for
four years but also to come close
to victory in 1862 and 1863 was a
reflection of the Southern soldiers’
profound belief in their cause. It was
also the result of its plainly superior
generals—the Virginian Robert E.
Lee above all. By contrast, at least
until the emergence of Ulysses S.
Grant and William Sherman as the
two leading commanders of the
Union forces, the North had been
able to muster only a succession
of timid and inept generals who
frittered away the advantages they
so abundantly possessed.
Reinvigorated by Grant and
Sherman, the North prevailed. The
razing of Atlanta in September 1864
was followed by Sherman’s “march
to the sea” at Savannah, Georgia.
Completed in December, it left a
60-mile- (96.5-km-) wide swathe of
destruction, deliberately targetingCHANGING SOCIETIES
civilian property. “War is cruelty,”
Sherman asserted. “The crueler it
is, the sooner it will be over.”A new freedom
The US Civil War was the world’s
first major industrial war, the first to
make widespread use of railroads,
and the first widely reported in a
new kind of popular press. There
was concentrated death on a scale
never seen before: around 670,000
dead, 50,000 of them civilians, in
little more than four years.
For Abraham Lincoln, the war
represented what in the Gettysburg
Address he called “unfinished
business.” The Constitution had
left unresolved the question of
how slavery could exist in a nation
“conceived in liberty.” Despite the
destruction and the huge death
toll, the war brought a chance
at “a new birth of freedom.” The
end of slavery, confirmed by
the Thirteenth Amendment in
1865, represented an opportunity
for the US to be recast as a
genuinely free land for all its
citizens, black and white. ■Grant stood by me when I
was crazy, and I stood by him
when he was drunk, and now
we stand by each other.
William ShermanUS_244-247_Gettysburg.indd 247 15/02/2016 16:44