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.
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.
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: