Confederate States Of America

"Don't kneel to me. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter" (Brinkley 414). President Abraham Lincoln spoke these words to a former slave that kneeled before him while walking the streets of the abandoned Confederate capitol of Richmond in 1865. Although there are several different questions of why the North won the Civil War, factors involving manpower, economy, military tactics and leadership, and presidential leadership, are all parts of a puzzle historians have tried to put together for years. I believe that these four factors should prove to be the most powerful reasons for the Union's destruction of the Confederate States of America. The presidential leadership of Lincoln will be revealed as the major influence over the other three factors.

According to Robert Krick, an interviewee of Carl Zebrowski's article "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "the basic problem was numbers. Give Abraham Lincoln seven million men and give Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee twenty-one million, cognitive dissonance doesn't matter, European recognition doesn't matter, the Emancipation Proclamation and its ripple effect don't matter. Twenty-one to seven is a very different thing then seven to twenty-one" (Zebrowski 223). Despite the North's enormous population advantage over the South during the Civil War, other wars proved that size doesn't matter. For example, the Colonist's success in the American Revolution proved to Great Britain that America was an insignificant, but a successful opponent. "While Northern superiority in numbers and resources was a necessary condition for Union Victory, it is not a sufficient explanation for that victory," says James McPherson (Zebrowski 224).

When looking at economic factors in the Civil War, we find that the war had a devastating effect on the South and a converse effect on the North. Because of the Northern blockade and the disconnection of Southern farmers from markets in the North, sales of cotton became nearly impossible. In the North, the war produced the same suffering as in the South, but "it also produced prosperity and economic growth by giving a major stimulus to both industry and agriculture," says Brinkley (Brinkley 384). Since all Southern products were out of reach for Northern Americans, the North enacted a completely natio...

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...rs a sense of nationalism by letting them know that they didn't need help from other countries or from the seceded Southern states. Conversely, Confederate soldiers often disapproved of the Confederate president's own decisions for the South, rather than joint decisions with his cabinet. According to David Herbert Donald, of the article "Died of Democracy," "an Englishman reported that he had never heard such handsome cursing as when Confederate privates, off duty and "squatted cross-legged on beds," spent their evenings damning their superiors' "eyes and limbs" (Donald 84). Meaning the Confederacy's soldiers mocked their own government. In the North, Lincoln gave the Union armies the sense of enthusiasm and nationalism it needed to help breakdown the Confederate States of America. Lincoln and the North were destined to defeat the South.

Regardless of whether it was manpower, resources, economy, or military, Lincoln knew he had the advantage and was not willing to let it go. Referencing the first quote of this report, Lincoln knew that God was on his side and that he was the man that would lead the slaves to their God-given right to freedom.