CHAPTER ONE 10 FORCES AND STRATEGIES OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH In the early morning hours of April 12 1861 Confederate rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston South Carolina Curiously this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims After a 34-hour bombardment Major Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under P G T Beauregard a brigadier general With war upon the land President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months He proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states although he insisted that they did not legally constitute a sovereign country but were instead states
FORCES AND STRATEGIES OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH 11 Photographer Mathew Brady took this picture of the Company A 9th Indiana Infantry At the start of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln called for loyal states to furnish state militiamen to help defend the Union in rebellion Lincoln also directed the secretary of the treasury to advance 2 million to assist in the raising of troops and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country The Confederate government had previ ously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months service and this figure was soon increased to 400,000
12 THE CIVIL WAR COMPARISON OF NORTH AND SOUTH 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 About 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 Union had at its command a 30-to-1 superiority in arms pro duction a 2-to-1 edge in available manpower and a greater number of commercial and financial resources The Union also had a functioning government and a small but efficient regular army and navy The Confederacy was not predestined to defeat however The Southern armies had the advantage of fighting on interior lines and their military tradition had been significant in the history of the United States before 1860 Moreover the long Confederate coast line of 3,500 miles 5,600 kilometers seemed to defy blockade and the Confederate president Jefferson Davis hoped to receive decisive foreign aid and inter vention 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
Jefferson Davis was the president and commander in chief of the Confederacy
