Monday, February 02, 2009
Passionate South out-gunned by North
Civil War History
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Several of the past columns have been about the Industrial Revolution and the enormous effect it had on the Civil War. Industrial Revolution inventions precipitated enormous changes in any society that embraced them as hallmarks of the future. In the North, entrepreneurs replaced individual hand labor with factory labor paid in wages. They were able to produce better and more goods more cheaply than they could be produced by hand labor.
A clock that cost $50 when made by hand in 1800 could be bought for 50 cents produced by a factory in 1850. Moreover, it was sturdier and kept better time than the clock made by hand.
Even more important, the same factory worker was now able to buy the clock and most other goods he wanted with the wages he earned in his own factory job.
The biggest thing these new factories created was opportunity -- opportunity for any willing worker to find a job and earn a wage. Money spread more broadly into society, and the average worker could now afford some luxuries as new technology left its mark on a newly industrialized society. It allowed a higher living standard for broad masses of a working-for-wages society. The northern United States saw the beginning of a middle class.
Further, immigrants arriving in the United States remained in the North where opportunity for work gave them the first step in becoming part of the American dream.
The South, on the other hand, was content to stay with its traditional slave-based economy. It remained rural, agricultural; the Industrial Revolution with its factory production was rejected. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, and because the South afforded no broad opportunity to immigrants, it attracted few.
To sum up briefly: The changes from hand labor to mechanical labor, the main characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, allowed the mass production of effective fighting tools, and thus ushered in a new form of warfare in which mass killing became the norm. The war killed about 620,000 young American men -- admittedly not all of them from battle wounds, but those who fell because of disease were no less dead. It was a terrible time to be an American.
The North took four years before its industrial might was able to dominate an impoverished South. And once President Lincoln found a competent military high command, the war was brought to a close. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pretty, but wars never are.
An interesting e-mail came in from Tony Rippee who reads The Roanoke Times. He writes that a recent column "reads with obvious bias. I do not disagree with the theme of industrialization leading to the North's eventual success, but the percentages you presented were overwhelming regarding some omitted statistics. Ninety-two percent of all industrial workers; 97 percent of firearm production; and 94 percent of iron production, all in favor of the North. With this being said, how do you suppose the South was able to last four years? Also, with so much in its favor, why did you not mention the population/casualty ratio the North suffered? Obviously, the South was able to overcome huge obstacles.
"The War Between the States presented great Americans on both sides. It would be nice if you recognized them and their efforts."
Readers of this column know that I have unbounded respect for the Confederate war effort. To accomplish what it did during the four years of battles remains a beacon of determination; but that hardly detracts from the fact that the South did not fight an intelligent war. I have written many times that the greatest enemy the Confederacy had was Lincoln, whose unwavering goal was restoration of the Union.
Further, the South had only one chance of not being defeated -- and that was to adopt the model presented to them 80 years earlier, when Gen. George Washington adopted as his prime war concept, "Above all, avoid head-to-head confrontation." And as a corollary: "Keep the fighting going, and make England, with a 3,000-mile supply line to the Colonies, so sick of the war that they would gladly give up." That was the model -- the South did not follow it.
As for the casualty totals, they come from Burke Davis' excellent "The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts." Davis writes, "At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War and some experts say the toll reached 700,000. ... Union armies [lost] 360,222. Confederate armies' losses are estimated at 258,000." Based on population at the time, with the North having about 22 million people, losses were 3.2 percent of the male population.
The South, with a white population of 5.5 million people, suffered losses of 9.4 percent of its male population.
Other statistics I used came from "The Times Atlas of World History," and Mr. Rippee's statistics are correct: Ninety-two percent of all industrial workers were in the North; they also had 97 percent of firearm production and 94 percent of iron production. In addition, the North had 93 percent of all textile production, 71 percent of all rail miles as part of a fully integrated and same-gauge transportation system, 97 percent of the coal production, 75 percent of all farm acreage, 81 percent of the country's wheat and 67 percent of its corn. The only product in which the South excelled was cotton: It produced 96 percent of the national crop.
To me, the wonder is not that the North won; the miracle of the Civil War is that the Confederacy, out-numbered, out-gunned and, in the last year of the war, out-generaled, was able to last as long as it did. By the last year of the war and after the twin disasters at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the South was fighting on pure heart and its passion for freedom -- and these are what kept the Confederacy going as long as it did.
And as an American and as a veteran, I recognize that I am one of the inheritors of these vibrant national traits that were shown with such valor by the young men who fought for both the South and the North.
Ned Harrison is a Greensboro, N.C., writer who specializes in military history and writes a monthly Civil War column for Southern newspapers. He wants to hear about your ancestors who were part of the Civil War. Write him at News & Record / RT, P.O. Box 20848, Greensboro, NC 27420 or e-mail him at n-b-h@mindspring.com.
