Steven Harrell

Against Long Odds

Apr 15, 2011 Updates

In 1861, the Confederacy faced an uphill fight against the forces of the Union. The population of the seceding states was around eight million, with three million of those persons being slaves at the time.  The population of the Union states was around 20 million.  The Confederacy had no standing army, no navy, and only two mills that could mill and process iron and steel.  Machine shops, coal mines and factories for the production of war resources were mostly located in the Union states.  Rhett Butler’s comments about the South being unequipped and ill prepared for war in 1861 in the movie Gone With The Wind were very accurate.

The South was traversed by flat coastal plains and broad rivers that could be navigated, and would allow invasion by the navy and marine forces of the Union.  Southern forts and installations were not fully prepared to defend against Union attack.  Masonry constructed coastal forts that were formidable during the age of smoothbore cannon, would be proven to be obsolete against more modern rifled weapons.

There were few skilled mechanics and inventors in the South that could build and maintain factories for the production of guns and other war materials.  There were few facilities in the South that could mill cotton into cloth for the production of uniforms, sails, or tents.  The South had no uniform system of currency.  There was no unified banking system to regulate currency in the South.

There were weapons available from armories that belonged to the U.S. that were seized at the time various states seceded, such as at Harper’s Ferry and Fayetteville, North Carolina.  However, there was no ready supply of raw materials needed to mass produce firearms in the South at the time the war broke out.   Many firearms available to some Confederate regiments at the outset of the war were old style smoothbore muskets that had limited range on a modern battlefield.  Other firearms available were of the older flintlock type, that had to be modified later for use by the troops.

The Confederacy depended on volunteer soldiers from state regiments early on in the war.  Conscription was not enacted into law until the spring of 1862.  After casualties began to mount up into the war, a lack of manpower haunted Confederate authorities up until the conclusion of the war.  Many letters written to Jefferson Davis praying for reinforcements during the war often went answered with the words “no other resource remains.”

The Confederacy had no navy to speak of.  The Union acquired and built a vast array of freshwater and seagoing vessels to enforce a blockade of southern ports, and to seal off southern rivers.  Many areas were effectively sealed off from the outside world after the blockade became more effective in 1863.  The Confederacy was forced to rely on blockade runners to get weapons, uniforms, and medicines into the country.

Most of the miles of completed railroad track were laid in the Union states.  The railroads in the Confederacy were poorly constructed, and were not well connected with one another.  Some railroad lines in the South were even laid with different gauges of track, which prohibited trains from running off one line and onto another.  The Union repeatedly took advantage of its far superior transportation system in its movement of troops during the war.  The movement of troops during the siege of Chattanooga in 1863 was at that time the largest and fastest movement of troops by railroads in history.

Artillery in the Confederate states was vastly inferior to the artillery deployed by the Union armies during the war.  Confederate guns were often imported from England, or captured from Union forces.  Confederate ordinance was vastly inferior to Union shells.  The quality of gunpowder in the charges was poor.  Confederate shells often misfired, exploded prematurely, or spun over and did not strike its intended targets.

Confederate supply services were abominable.  Confederate troops were not supplied with anything close to the basic amount of daily rations that would prevent soldiers from starving.  They were also poorly supplied with equipment, uniforms, and most important of all, shoes.  Confederate soldiers were required to march, campaign, and fight without being properly fed or properly supplied with clothing in all types of weather conditions.  In contrast, the Union armies were the best fed and best equipped armies in the world at that time.  The commissary command structure in the Confederacy was criminal at best, as the soldiers were underfed, ill clothed, and ill cared for, all during the war.

Union and Confederate forces occupied much of the same areas of Northern Virginia for prolonged periods during the Civil War.  These occupations caused a severe shortage of food, supplies, and forage for the draft animals that pulled Confederate supply wagons and artillery.  The Confederate invasions of the North in 1862 and in 1863 were mostly because Virginia was being scraped bare of forage for the animals, and food for the soldiers, and shoes for the Confederate soldiers.  The battle of Gettysburg itself started when Harry Heth’s Confederate troops entered the town looking for shoes.

Yet in spite of all the inadequate supplies and hardships, the troops of the Confederacy managed to astonish the world by thwarting repeated Union invasions in Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee for several years.  The Army of the Potomac failed in seven invasion attempts to capture Richmond or to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia.  The South could win the war by resisting invasion from the North.  It also had the opportunity to win the war by simply holding its army together, and by outlasting the will of the U.S. Government to continue the conflict more than four years.  The war was the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history.  It was bloody because of disease and because of the primitive nature of battlefield triage at the time.  It was also bloody because the commanders in the field did not fully understand the effect of modern rifled weapons.  The war was also bloody because great generals such Robert E. Lee became determined early on in the war to conquer a peace through a decisive victory on the battlefield.  It was against these long odds that the Confederacy began its struggle with the Union in 1861.  Yet in spite of these odds, the outcome of the Civil War was a near run thing.  When the South failed to conquer a peace on the battlefield, the Confederacy made the war last long enough to make significant numbers of citizens in the North demand a peace, and make efforts to put an end to the struggle.