Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the GrayWood, William
History
Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray
Wood, William
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Campaigns
There is the same tale to tell about transport and munitions. Outside
the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where Southern
cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta and
Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had many places,
each with superior plant, besides which the oversea munition world
was far more at the service of the open-ported North than of the
close-blockaded South. What sea-power meant in this respect may be
estimated from the fact that out of the more than three-quarters of
a million rifles bought by the North in the first fourteen months
of the war all but a beggarly thirty thousand came from overseas.
[Illustration: North and South in 1861.]
Transport was done by road, rail, sea, and inland waters. Other
things being equal, a hundred tons could be moved by water as easily
as ten by rail or one by road. Now, the North not only enjoyed
enormous advantages in sea-power, both mercantile and naval, but
in road, rail, canal, and river transport too. The road transport
that affected both sides most was chiefly in the South, because most
maneuvering took place there. "Have you been through Virginia?--Yes,
in several places" is a witticism that might be applied to many
another State where muddy sloughs abounded. In horses, mules, and
vehicles the richer North wore out the poorer and blockaded South.
Both sides sent troops, munitions, and supplies by rail whenever
they could; and here, as a glance at the map will show, the North
greatly surpassed the South in mileage, strategic disposition,
and every other way.
The South had only one through line from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi; and this ran across that Northern salient which threatened
the South from the southwestern Alleghanies. The other rails all had
the strategic defect of not being convenient for rapid concentration
by land; for most of the Southern rails were laid with a view to
getting surplus cotton and tobacco overseas. The strategic gap
at Petersburg was due to a very different cause; for there, in
order to keep its local transfers, the town refused to let the most
important Virginian lines connect.
Taking sea-power in its fullest sense, to include all naval and
mercantile parts on both salt and fresh water, we can quite understand
how it helped the nautical North to get the strangle-hold on the
landsman's South. The great bulk of the whole external trade of
the South was done by shipping. But, though the South was strong in
exportable goods, it was very weak in ships. It owned comparatively
few of the vessels that carried its rice, cotton, and tobacco crops
to market and brought back made goods in return. Yankees, Britishers,
and Bluenoses (as Nova Scotian craft were called) did most of the
oversea transportation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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