The American antebellum South, though steeped in pride and raised in
military tradition, was to be no match for the burgeoning superiority of
the rapidly developing North in the coming Civil War. The lack of
emphasis on manufacturing and commercial interest, stemming from the
Southern desire to preserve their traditional agrarian society,
surrendered to the North their ability to function independently, much
less to wage war. It was neither Northern troops nor generals that won
the Civil War, rather Northern guns and industry.
From the onset of war,
the Union had obvious advantages. Quite simply,
the North had large amounts
of just about everything that the South did
not, boasting resources that the
Confederacy had even no means of
attaining (See Appendices, Brinkley et al.
415). Sheer manpower ratios
were unbelievably one-sided, with only nine of
the nation's 31 million
inhabitants residing in the seceding states (Angle
7). The Union also
had large amounts of land available for growing food
crops which served
the dual purpose of providing food for its hungry
soldiers and money for
its ever-growing industries. The South, on the other
hand, devoted most
of what arable land it had exclusively to its main cash
crop: cotton
(Catton, The Coming Fury 38). Raw materials were almost
entirely
concentrated in Northern mines and refining industries. Railroads
and
telegraph lines, the veritable lifelines of any army, traced paths all
across the Northern countryside but left the South isolated, outdated,
and starving (See Appendices). The final death knell for a modern South
developed in the form of economic colonialism. The Confederates were
all
too willing to sell what little raw materials they possessed to
Northern
Industry for any profit they could get. Little did they know,
"King Cotton"
could buy them time, but not the war. The South had
bartered something that
perhaps it had not intended: its independence
(Catton, Reflections 143).
The North's ever-growing industry was an important supplement to its
economical dominance of the South. Between the years of 1840 and 1860,
American industry saw sharp and steady growth. In 1840 the total value
of goods manufactured in the United States stood at $483 million,
increasing over fourfold by 1860 to just under $2 billion, with the
North taking the king's ransom (Brinkley et al. 312). The underlying
reason behind this dramatic expansion can be traced directly to the
American
Industrial Revolution.
Beginning in the early 1800s, traces
of the industrial revolution in
England began to bleed into several aspects
of the American society.
One of the first industries to see quick
development was the textile
industry, but, thanks to the British government,
this development almost
never came to pass. Years earlier, England's
James
Watt had developed
the first successful steam engine. This invention,
coupled with the
birth of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, completely
revolutionized the
British textile industry, and eventually made it the most
profitable in
the world ("Industrial Revolution"). The British government,
parsimonious with its newfound knowledge of machinery, attempted to
protect the nation's manufacturing preeminence by preventing the export
of textile machinery and even the emigration of skilled mechanics.
Despite valiant attempts at deterrence, though, many immigrants managed
to make their way into the United States with the advanced knowledge of
English technology, and they were anxious to acquaint America with the
new machines (Furnas 303).
And acquaint the Americans they did: more
specifically, New England
Americans. It was people like Samuel Slater who
can be credited with
beginning the revolution of the textile industry in
America. A skilled
mechanic in England, Slater spent long hours studying the
schematics for
the spinning jenny until finally he no longer needed them. He
emigrated
to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and there, together with a Quaker
merchant
by the name of Moses Brown, he built a spinning jenny from memory
(Furnas 303). This meager mill would later become known as the first
modern factory in America. It would also become known as the point at
which the North began its economic domination of the Confederacy.
Although slow to accept change, The South was not entirely unaffected
by
the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Another inventor by the name
of
Eli
Whitney set out in 1793 to revolutionize the Southern cotton
industry.
Whitney was working as a tutor for a plantation owner in
Georgia (he was
also, ironically, born and raised in New England) and
therefore knew the
problems of harvesting cotton (Brinkley et al. 200).
Until then, the arduous
task of separating the seeds from the cotton
before sale had been done
chiefly by slave labor and was, consequently,
very inefficient. Whitney
developed a machine which would separate the
seed from the cotton swiftly
and effectively, cutting the harvesting
time by more than one half
("Industrial Revolution"). This machine,
which became known as the cotton
gin, had profound results on the South,
producing the highest uptrend the
industry had ever, and would ever,
see. In that decade alone cotton
production figures increased by more
than 2000 percent (Randall and Donald
36). Enormous amounts of business
opportunities opened up, including,
perhaps most importantly, the
expansion of the Southern plantations. This
was facilitated by the fact
that a single worker could now do the same
amount of work in a few hours
that a group of workers had once needed a
whole day to do (Brinkley et
al. 201). This allowed slaves to pick much more
cotton per day and
therefore led most plantation owners to expand their land
base. The
monetary gains of the cash crop quickly took precedence over the
basic
necessity of the food crop, which could be gotten elsewhere. In 1791
cotton production amounted to only 4000 bales, but by 1860, production
levels had skyrocketed to just under five million bales (Randall and
Donald 36). Cotton was now bringing in nearly $200 million a year,
which
constituted almost two-thirds of the total export trade (Brinkley
et al.
329). "King Cotton" was born, and it soon became a fundamental
motive in
Southern diplomacy. However, during this short burst of
economic prowess,
the South failed to realize that it would never be
sustained by "King
Cotton" alone. What it needed was the guiding hand
of "Queen Industry."
Eli Whitney soon came to realize that the South would not readily
accept
change, and decided to take his inventive mind back up to the
North, where
it could be put to good use. He found his niche in the
small arms business.
Previously, during two long years of quasi-war
with France, Americans had
been vexed by the lack of rapidity with which
sufficient armaments could be
produced. Whitney came to the rescue with
the invention of interchangeable
parts. His vision of the perfect
factory included machines which would
produce, from a preshaped mold,
the various components needed to build a
standard infantry rifle, and
workers on an assembly line who would construct
it ("Industrial
Revolution"). The North, eager to experiment and willing to
try
anything that smacked of economic progress, decided to test the waters
of this inviting new method of manufacture. It did not take the
resourceful Northerners very long to actualize Eli Whitney's dream and
make mass production a reality. The small arms industry boomed, and
kept
on booming. By the onset of the Civil War, the confederate states
were
dolefully noting the fact that there were thirty-eight Union arms
factories
capable of producing a total of 5,000 infantry rifles per day,
compared with
their own paltry capacity of 100 (Catton, Glory Road 241).
During the
mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution dug its spurs deep into
the side of the
Northern states. Luckily, immigration numbers were
skyrocketing at this
time, and the sudden profusion of factory positions
that needed to be filled
was not a big problem (See Appendices and
Randall and Donald 1-2). The
immigrants, who were escaping anything
from the Irish Potato Famine to
British oppression, were willing to work
for almost anything and withstand
inhuman factory conditions (Jones).
Although this exploitation was extremely
cruel and unfair to the
immigrants, Northern businessmen profited immensely
from it (Brinkley et
al. 264)
By the beginning of war in 1860, the
Union, from an economical
standpoint, stood like a towering giant over the
stagnant Southern
agrarian society. Of the over 128,000 industrial firms in
the nation at
this time, the Confederacy held only 18,026. New England alone
topped
the figure with over 19,000, and so did Pennsylvania 21,000 and New
York
with 23,000 (Paludan 105). The total value of goods manufactured in the
state of New York alone was over four times that of the entire
Confederacy. The Northern states produced 96 percent of the locomotives
in the country, and, as for firearms, more of them were made in one
Connecticut county than in all the Southern factories combined ("Civil
War," Encyclopedia Americana).
The Confederacy had made one fatal
mistake: believing that its thriving
cotton industry alone would be enough
to sustain itself throughout the
war. Southerners saw no need to venture
into the uncharted industrial
territories when good money could be made with
cotton. What they failed
to realize was that the cotton boom had done more
for the North than it
had done for the South. Southerners could grow vast
amounts of cotton,
but due to the lack of mills, they could do nothing with
it.
Consequently, the cotton was sold to the Northerners who would use it in
their factories to produce wools and linens, which were in turn sold
back to the South. This cycle stimulated industrial growth in the Union
and stagnated it in the Confederate states (Catton, Reflections 144).
Southern plantation owners erred in believing that the growing textile
industries of England and France were highly dependent on their cotton,
and that, in the event of war, those countries would come to their
rescue ("Civil War," World Book). They believed that the North would
then be forced to acquiesce to the "perfect" Southern society. They
were
wrong.
During the war years, the economical superiority of the Union, which
had been so eminent before the war, was cemented. The Civil War gave an
even bigger boost to the already growing factories in the North. The
troops needed arms and warm clothes on a constant basis, and Northern
Industry was glad to provide them. By 1862, the Union could boast of
its
capacity to manufacture almost all of its own war materials using
its own
resources (Brinkley et al. 415). The South, on the other hand,
was fatally
dependent on outside resources for its war needs.
Dixie was not only
lagging far behind in the factories. It had also
chosen to disregard two
other all-important areas in which the North had
chosen to thrive:
transportation and communication.
. . . the Railroad, the Locomotive, and
the Telegraph- -iron, steam,
and lightning-these three mighty genii of
civilization . . . will know
no lasting pause until the whole vast line of
railway shall completed
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Furnas 357)
During the antebellum years, the North American populace especially had
shown a great desire for an effective mode of transportation. For a
long
time, canals had been used to transport people and goods across
large
amounts of land which were accessible by water, but, with
continuing growth
and expansion, these canals were becoming obsolete and
a symbol of
frustration to many Northerners. They simply needed a way
to transport
freight and passengers across terrains where waterways did
not exist
(Brinkley et al. 256-59).
The first glimmer of hope came as America's first
primitive locomotive,
powered by a vertical wood-fired boiler, puffed out of
Charleston
hauling a cannon and gun crew firing salutes (Catton, Glory Road
237).
Ironically enough, this revolution had begun in the South, but there
it
would not prosper. The Railroading industry quickly blossomed in the
North, where it provided a much needed alternative to canals, but could
never quite get a foothold in the South. Much of this can be accredited
to the fact that Northern engineers were experienced in the field of
ironworking and had no problem constructing vast amounts of intricate
rail lines, while Southerners, still fledglings in the field, simply
hobbled.
This hobbling was quite unmistakable at the outbreak of the
Civil War.
The Union, with its some 22,000 miles of track, was able to
transport
weaponry, clothes, food, soldiers, and whatever supplies were
needed to
almost any location in the entire theater. Overall, this greatly
aided
the Northern war effort and worked to increase the morale of the
troops. The South, on the other hand, could not boast such logistical
prowess. With its meager production of only four percent of the
nation"s
locomotives and its scant 9,000 miles of track, the Confederacy
stood in
painful awareness of its inferiority (Randall and Donald 8).
Trackage
figures alone, though, do not tell the entire story of the
weakness of the
South"s railroad"s system. Another obstacle arose in
the problem of track
gauge. The gauge, or width of track, frequently
varied from rail to rail in
the South. Therefore, goods would often
have to be taken off one train and
transferred to another before moving
on to their final destination. Any
perishable goods had to be stored in
warehouses if there were any delays,
and this was not an uncommon
occurrence. There also existed a problem in the
fact that there were
large gaps between many crucial parts of the South,
which required
suppliers to make detours over long distances or to carry
goods between
rails by wagon (Catton, The Coming Fury 434). As the war
progressed,
the Confederate railroad system steadily deteriorated, and, by
the end
of the struggle, it had all but collapsed.
Communication, or
rather lack thereof, was another impediment to
Southern economical growth.
The telegraph had burst into American life
in 1844, when Samuel Morse first
transmitted, from the Supreme Court
chamber in the capitol to Alfred Vail in
Baltimore, his famous words
"What hath God wrought!" (Brinkley et al. 314).
The advent of this
fresh form of communication greatly facilitated the
operation of the
railroad lines in the North. Telegraph lines ran along the
tracks,
connecting one station to the next and aiding the scheduling of the
trains. Moreover, the telegraph provided instant communication between
distant cities, tying the nation together like never before. Yet,
ironically, it also buttressed the growing schism between the two
diverging societies (314). The South, unimpressed by this new modern
technology and not having the money to experiment, chose not to delve
very deeply into its development. Pity, they would learn to regret it.
By 1860, the North had laid over 90 percent of the nation"s some 50,000
miles of telegraph wire. Morse"s telegraph had become an ideal answer
to
the problems of long-distance communication, with its latest triumph
of land
taking shape in the form of the Pacific telegraph, which ran
from New York
to San Francisco and used 3,595 miles of wire (Brinkley et
al. 315). The
North, as with all telegraph lines, embraced its
relatively low cost and
ease of construction. The Pacific telegraph
brought the agricultural
Northwest together with the more industrious
Northeast and the blossoming
West, forming an alliance which would prove
to break the back of the
ever-weakening South (324-25).
The Civil War was a trying time for both
the Union and the Confederacy
alike, but the question of its outcome was
obvious from the start. The
North was guaranteed a decisive victory over the
ill-equipped South.
Northerners, prepared to endure the deprivation of war,
were startled to
find that they were experiencing an enormous industrial
boom even after
the first year of war. Indeed, the only Northern industry
that suffered
from the war was the carrying trade (Catton, Reflections 144).
To the
South, however, the war was a draining and debilitating leech,
sucking
the land dry of any semblance of economical formidability. No
financial
staple was left untouched; all were subject to diminishment and
exhaustion. This agrarian South, with its traditional values and
beliefs, decided not to cultivate two crops which would prove quite
crucial in the outcome of the Civil War. Those crops were industry and
progress, and without them the South was doomed to defeat. A wise man
he
was, that Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. A wise man indeed.
Appendices
(Note: appendices taken from Brinkley et al.
315-17, 415)
Works Cited
Angle, Paul M. A Pictorial History of
the Civil War Years. Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1967.
Brinkley,
Alan, et al. American History: A Survey. New York: McGraw,
1991.
Catton,
Bruce. The Army of the Potomac: Glory Road. Garden City, New
York:
Doubleday, 1952.
---. The Coming Fury. Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
1961. Vol 2
of The Centennial History of the Civil War. 3 vols. n.d.
---. Reflections on the Civil War. Ed. John Leekley. 1st ed. Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1981.
"Civil War." Encyclopedia Americana.
1987 ed.
"Civil War." World Book Encyclopedia. 1981 ed.
"Cotton." World
Book Encyclopedia. 1981 ed.
Furnas, J.C.. The Americans: A Social History of
the United States
1587-1914. New York: Putnam, 1969.
Jones, Donald C.
Telephone Interview. 28 Feb. 1993.
"Industrial Revolution." World Book
Encyclopedia. 1981 ed.
Paludan, Philip Shaw. A People"s Contest. New York:
Harper, 1988.
Randall, J.G., and David Herbert Donald. The Civil War and
Reconstruction. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1969.
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