The North: Superior To The South

"In all history, no nation of mere agriculturists ever made successful

war against a nation of mechanics. . . .You are bound to fail"

-Union officer William Tecumseh Sherman to a Southern friend.

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countryside but left the South isolated, outdated, developed in the

form of economic colonialism. The Confederates were and starving (See

Appendices). The final death knell for a modern South 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.