Civil War: Adavantages and Disadvantages of North vs. South

Growing dissent between the North and South began mounting years before the Civil War. This disagreement between the two regions led to each side understanding the major differences between one another. The regions had different political views, moral views, and views on the future for the economy. One key difference between the North and South was their view on slavery. The South’s economy was based primarily on cash crops like cotton. These crops were grown on plantations with slaves as the chief labor source. The South wanted to continue and expand the practice of slavery into the West, but the North was adamantly against such action. Many antislavery and abolition movements had significant support in the North. This disagreement eventually led to the beginning of the Civil War. Each side had different advantages and disadvantages at the onset of war due to the differences in the economies and people in the North and South prior to the Civil War. The key advantages and disadvantages of the North and South contributed to the success or complication of each side’s war strategies. The advantages of the North outweighed their disadvantages and the South’s advantages leading to a victory for the North in the American Civil War.

The North had many advantages at the onset of the Civil War. One advantage that the North had over the South was population size. The North contained more than 60% of the population while the South contained less than 40%. This difference in population plays an important role in the North’s ability to supply troops into military service and continuing the production of industries. If the North did not have a significant amount of the population, their production of war materials could have fallen behind (He...

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...of New Orleans. The inability to supply troops complicated South’s strategy and forced their troops to undergo poor and difficult conditions (Hewitt and Lawson 398- 405).

Another disadvantage of the South during the Civil War was Jefferson Davis’s lack of concern for the South’s civilians. Davis was primarily concerned with military duties during the war and focused little on the morale of the South’s civilians. As a result of his inattention to the public, the Confederacy’s economy began to collapse during the Civil War. Inflation soared due to the South’s effort to try and finance the war effort. Davis’s unconcern with the morale of the South’s civilians complicated the war effort for the Confederacy. This civilian dissent drew attention away from the war and forced Southern leaders to focus on other concerns such as the costs of war (Hewitt and Lawson 403-410).