Union industrial superiority Flashcards
Topic sentence
Some historians such as Richard Current argue that the Confederacy lost the war because of Union industrial superiority.
Evidence 1 - industrial superiority
The Union economy was increasingly becoming more industrial than the Southern economy before the beginning of the war as the Southern economy still relied on a system of slave labor, whereas the Northern economy didn’t. This is shown through the fact that in 1860, the Northern State of Massachusetts produced more manufactured goods than all the future Confederate states put together. Additionally, the North had 9x the Souths industrial production and was responsible for producing 97% of U.S firearms. This highlighted the disadvantage that the South was at during the war, the North was able to access more guns, resources for soldiers and civilians, etc and this ultimately meant that they could sustain their war effort for longer than the South. A Confederate defeat, although not guaranteed, was somewhat inevitable due to their lack of industrial capacity.
Evidence 2- blockade
Furthermore, the Union blockade, a Union attempt to prevent the Confederacy from exporting any goods, or accessing any support from other nations, proved to be a challenge for the Confederacy. While the Union were able to produce their own supplies, the Confederacy struggled to access any as their industrial capacity was significantly small and they could no longer rely on other nations for resources due to the Union blockade. This therefore contributed to their defeat as it tired out Confederate supplies, getting harder for the South to deal with as the war went on.
Counter analysis
However, blockade running was extremely successful, indeed blockade runners stood a 75% chance of success, meaning that the South were able to import 60% of their small arms during the war. This suggests that the Union blockade didn’t have as large of an impact on the South than the Union would have hoped for, highlighting that the Union blockade was not the most important reason for a Confederate defeat.
Evaluation
To evaluate, it is clear that the Union industrail capacity is a significant reason for the Confederate defeat during the American Civil War as Richard Current argues, “surely, in view of disparity of resources, it would have taken a miracle… to enable the South to win”, emphasising how a lack of resources contributed to the Confederate defeat.
