Few nations have been as unprepared for a full-scale war as was the United States in 1861. The U. S. Army consisted of barely 17,000 men. Most of the soldiers were stationed at remote outposts on the western frontier. To make matters worse for the Union, a large number of army officers who had been born in the South and educated at West Point resigned from the army and offered their services to the Confederacy. The U. S. Navy was in an equally bad state. It had performed little duty since the War of 1812. The Navy had a total of 90 ships, but only 42 of them were in active service at the outbreak of civil war. Of this number, 11 fell into Confederate hands with the capture of the naval base at Norfolk, Va., in April, 1861. The remaining vessels were scattered around the world. Moreover, 230 of 1,400 naval officers joined the forces of the Confederacy. At the beginning of the Civil War, the North seemed to possess every advantage: (1) 23 Northern states aligned against only 11 Southern states. (Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were slave states, but they remained in the Union. Also, the western counties of Virginia revolted and formed their own state when the Old Dominion cast her lot with the Confederacy.) (2) The population of the Northern states was approximately 22,000,000 people. The Southern states had only 9,105,000 people, and one-third of them (3,654,000) were slaves. The great difference in population, plus a steady flow of European immigrants into the Northern states, gave the Union tremendous manpower. Over 2,000,000 men served in the Federal armies, while no more than half that number fought for the South. [Illustration: The “General Haupt” was one of several locomotives seized by Federals on the Orange & Alexandria (now Southern) Railroad.] (3) The North had 110,000 manufacturing plants, as compared with 18,000 in the Confederate States. The North produced 97% of all firearms in America, and it manufactured 96% of the nation’s railroad equipment. [Illustration: Although the South possessed few manufacturing plants in 1861, Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works produced such items as machinery, cannon, submarines, torpedoes, and plates for ironclad ships.] (4) Most of the country’s financial resources were in the North. In view of the North’s statistical superiority in so many areas, people often do not understand how the Civil War lasted four long years. Many reasons account for this: (1) Both North and South needed many months of preparation before they were ready for full-scale war. (2) For at least the first eighteen months of the war, the Confederacy was able to obtain many supplies from sympathetic nations in Europe. Not until late in 1862 did the Federals have enough ships to blockade effectively the major Southern ports. (3) Southern armies generally fought on the defensive. It does not require as many men to hold a position as it does to attack and seize that position.