Explanation:
At first glance it seemed that the 23 states that remained in the Union after secession were more than a match for the 11 Southern states. Approximately 21 million people lived in the North, compared with some nine million in the South of whom about four million were slaves. In addition, the North was the site of more than 100,000 manufacturing plants, against 18,000 south of the Potomac River, and more than 70 percent of the railroads were in the Union. Furthermore, the Federals had at their command a 30-to-1 superiority in arms production, a 2-to-1 edge in available manpower, and a great preponderance of commercial and financial resources. The Union also had a functioning government and a small but efficient regular army and navy.
Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America consisted of 11 states—7 original members and 4 states that seceded after the fall of Fort Sumter. Four border states held slaves but remained in the Union. West Virginia became the 24th loyal state in 1863.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The Confederacy was not predestined to defeat, however. The Southern armies had the advantage of fighting on interior lines, and their military tradition had bulked large in the history of the United States before 1860. Moreover, the long Confederate coastline of 3,500 miles (5,600 km) seemed to defy blockade, and the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, hoped to receive decisive foreign aid and intervention. Confederate soldiers were fighting to achieve a separate and independent country based on what they called “Southern institutions,” the chief of which was the institution of slavery. So the Southern cause was not a lost one; indeed, other countries—most notably the United States itself in the American Revolution against Britain—had won independence against equally heavy odds.
The high commands
Command problems plagued both sides. Of the two rival commanders in chief, most people in 1861 thought Davis to be abler than Lincoln. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, a hero of the Mexican-American War, a capable secretary of war under Pres. Franklin Pierce, and a U.S. representative and senator from Mississippi. Lincoln—who had served in the Illinois state legislature and as an undistinguished one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives—could boast of only a brief period of military service in the Black Hawk War, in which he saw no action.
Learn about the personal and political life of Jefferson Davis from his great-great-grandson Bertram Hayes-Davis
Learn about the personal and political life of Jefferson Davis from his great-great-grandson Bertram Hayes-Davis
Overview of the life of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America (1861–65) during the American Civil War.
© Civil War Trust (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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As president and commander in chief of the Confederate forces, Davis revealed many fine qualities, including dignity, firmness, determination, and honesty, but he was flawed by his excessive pride, hypersensitivity to criticism, poor political skills, and tendency to micromanage. He engaged in extended petty quarrels with generals and cabinet members. He also suffered from ill health throughout the conflict. Davis’s effectiveness was further hampered by a political system that limited him to a single six-year term—thereby making him a lame duck immediately upon his election—and that frowned on organized political parties, which Southerners accused of having been at least partly responsible for the coming of the Civil War. The lack of political parties meant that Davis could command no loyalty from a broad group of people such as governors or political appointees when he came under heavy criticism.
