History of the United States I / Unit 15 USH1 2120 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Balance Sheet
The idea
The Confederacy was on the defensive and needed only to survive, fighting on home ground with civilian support and a coastline from Texas to Virginia to evade the blockade. The Union was on the offensive and had to conquer and hold, fighting on unfamiliar ground against hostile civilians with long supply lines. The Union had over twenty million people to the Confederacy's fewer than nine million, plus continued European immigration through the eighteen sixties, superior industry and railroads, and abundant food, while the South's prime land was in cotton rather than food and its government printed money into runaway inflation.
In practice
One side needing to win and the other needing only to not lose, which are different problems with different arithmetic.
Where people slip
Do not read the resource tables as a prediction. The anchor is careful that the Union's task was to pacify a conquered Confederacy of over half a million square miles and nearly nine million people, which no amount of industry accomplishes by itself. Material advantage explains why the Union could sustain the war, not why it won it, and the four years between Bull Run and Appomattox are what the difference cost.
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