Compare And Contrast Civil War Navies

The Union also known as the North, fought against the Confederate States of America also known as the South. The North and South had their own strategies. The South had to fight a defensive war as much as possible. They had to draw out the war as long as possible and get the North tired of fighting. The South asked for help from foreign countries like England or France.

     The North’s advantage in transport weighed heavily as the war went on. The Union had more wagons, horses, and ships than that of the Confederacy, and they also had an impressive edge in railroads. The Confederacy had only one east-west rail connection, between Memphis, Tennessee and Chattanooga, Tennessee. The latter was an important rail hub with connections via Knoxville, Tennessee into Virginia and down through Atlanta, Georgia to Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. But the North already had an extensive railroad network. Three major lines gave the western

The navy blocked all the sea ports. The reason blocking all the southern ports was a big part of the plan was because the south’s main exports were cash crops. Before the war the South mainly exported their cash crops to the North and Europe. Since they were having a war with the North, exporting to the North was not an option. Their only source of income was from Europe. The North was aware of this.That’s why the blockade was so important. The goal of this part of the plan was to starve the South of their resources. Step two of the Anaconda Plan was to split the Union in half. This would be achieved through the Mississippi River. In April,1862, Union admiral David Farragut led 46 ships up the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The goal of splitting the South was so that the two sides could not communicate. Without communication the strength of the South would greatly decrease. And would make the South very discombobulated. Part 3 of the Anaconda plan was for the Union to capture Richmond,VA. After the capturing of Richmond the plan was to destroy the Confederate government. Without a government to lead the Confederacy, the Confederacy would not have any leadership to lead it to

This can be seen in the Major Battles of the Civil War map. The map shows all of the battles that took place during the civil war. The map also shows big line all around the confederate states in the water, named Union blockade of Ports. This line is showing where they had ships positioned so no resources could get in or out of the south. (Document 2). This document shows that the Union had a plan for this war that was more strategic than just fighting to the death. This plan was called the anaconda plan, and it was a plan to squeeze the confederate states out of resources. This line of Union blockade were on water, and land. During the war, the Union blockade became smaller and smaller, containing all of the confederacy to a smaller area. This is one way that helped the Union win the war in the end. Another example of the Union having better strategies than the Confederacy is Sherman’s Scorched Earth Campaign. “Plantations were burned, crops destroyed and stores of food pillaged. In the wake of his progress to the sea he left numerous "Sherman sentinels" (the chimneys of burnt out houses) and "Sherman neckties" (railroad rails that had been heated and wrapped around trees.). Along the way, his army was joined by thousands of former slaves who brought up the rear of the march because they had no other place to go.” (Document 7). This part of the text explains how Sherman’s Scorched Earth campaign was meant to scare the confederacy into

From the onset of the war, the Union had its obvious advantages. They simply had large amounts of resources of which the South did not. "In all history, no nation of mere agriculturists ever made successful war against a nation of mechanics. You are bound to fail" --Union officer William Tecumseh Sherman to a Southern friend. Over 85 percent of the nation's industry and significant material resources were controlled by the North. The North was able to use take power of their economical advantages to produce military supplies, and replace damaged equipment more rapidly than the Confederacy. On top of that, forces for the field could be re-supplied rapidly because

In capturing Vicksburg, the Union had severed the Confederates into two halves entirely removing the Trans-Mississippi from the Confederate war effort. Removing the Trans-Mississippi from the war fatally crippled the South as the Trans-Mississippi had contained “nearly one million horses, 800,000 oxen, over 300,000 mules, and millions of cattle. The area was likewise a source of manpower. During the course of the war Texas furnished 58,000 men for Confederate armies, Louisiana provided 53,000, and Arkansas sent 45,000. Missouri and Indian Territory did not secede from the Union, but nonetheless sent 40,000 and 5,000 men, respectively, into rebel service.” (Prushankin, 2015). All of this and more, including huge quantities of molasses, cane sugar, sheep, oxen, cattle, mules, sweet potatoes, butter, wool, and salt, were transported through Vicksburg, until its surrender (Civil War Trust, n.d.). The capitulation of Vicksburg eliminated all of these supplies from the Southern war effort and wreaked havoc on the already struggling war machine of the South to provide food, arms and men to the army. Moreover, the loss of Vicksburg as an access route across the Mississippi cut off all of the Confederacy’s imports from Europe (Franklin, 2013). Routed through Mexico, European guns and machinery managed to partly offset the South's lack of industry and arms manufacturing businesses (Civil War Trust, n.d.). When this supply of new guns and machinery was ended, the South was forced to rely solely on its own insufficient manufacturing capabilities. The lack of new weapons and munitions factories would severely hinder the success of Southern armies as they struggled to keep their troops armed and ready to fight. Lastly, when the Union, by capturing Vicksburg, seized control of the Mississippi River or aptly called by biographer Lloyd Lewis “The spinal column of

The Civil War was a very gruesome war. The war had become the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). During the war the union and confederacy had many weaknesses and strengths. Some of them are technology, army/military and government.

Both the Confederates and colonists found themselves without navies capable of truly challenging their enemy. This led the Confederacy to the same frantic ship building and disorganized naval efforts as in the American Revolution. And is also the reason the Confederacy used the same tactics against the Union, as the American colonists used against the

Weapons are and always have been the focal point of a war, whoever has the better or more advanced weaponry is much more likely to win the conflict. Advancements do not matter if you cannot produce the weaponry. The Confederacy lacked extremely in comparison to the Union when it came to producing weapons. A year before the war began, the would be Union manufactured about ninety-seven percent of the United States’ weapons. Since the Union controlled the entire federal navy it gave them a huge advantage and extremely hurt the Confederacy.

Just like the British during these last two wars, the North had the mastery of the oceans, so the South had to make up for its small Navy by sticking to similar tactics to the ones used against the British. During the Civil war, the South implemented guerre de course, three words that are being mentioned a lot, just like the Navies of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. The Confederate Navy did this pretty well during the war because “despite all the disadvantages under which the Confederate operated, it could challenge larger Union forces remarkable well up until late 1864,” (McPherson p363). The South received Foreign aid as well; secretly, the British suppled the South with ships such as the CSS

The Confederacy had hardly any naval strength, which was critical. If the Confederates had had a large navy, they might have been able to break the Union blockade. Their clients for cotton did not come to their aid either; despite some talk of intervention in the war, no action was taken by Britain or France (McPherson 384). The “allies” of the Confederacy simply did not want the trials, costs, and casualties of a war on their hands because of another country’s civil war. Such an action could potentially spark another war, something that Britain and France simply figured that the Confederacy was not worth.

Maritime wars took a noteworthy change amid the common war. On March 8 1862 the Confederates revealed a ship that would change maritime fighting everlastingly, making wooden body ship outdated. The Confederates set two layers of steel plate over the structure of the "Merrimack", situated ten firearms along its side and included a smash her bow. This resilient ship in its first fight, in the harbor of Hampton Roads assaulted five Union boats. The "Merrimack" renamed the "Virginia" sank one Union boat, exploded another ship, and made a third run ashore. No shots could infiltrate her shield. The unexpected thing was the Merrimack was left to sink after the Union naval force cut gaps into it.

An army of soldiers requires an enormous amount of supplies, so one would therefore need to have the means to thereby create those supplies. The North was well industrialized by the time of the Civil War, whereas the South was still highly dependent on slave labor, which hindered their ability to industrialize.4 When it came to producing weapons, uniforms, shoes, preserved food, tools for more effective farming to feed soldiers, the telegraph, and other necessities, the Union was way in the lead. They could not only create these products, but they could produce them in mass amounts in a fraction of the time it originally took to make them.5 The South had a hard time enduring the war because they did not have the factories necessary to produce the quality and mass amount of supplies they needed.

During this time the Union had taken over the North Carolina sound and major ports along the South Carolina coast to include the Port of Savannah, Georgia. In addition they had seized control of major ports along the east coast of Florida and Fernandina and St Augustine along the west coast of Florida. The control of all these major ports allowed for the effective blockading of the south from outside aid and resupply along with providing a good staging area for attacks against the Confederates.

Economically the Union was very strong and greatly outweighed the South. President Lincoln, as the war had begun, quickly declared a blockade, as described earlier, against the main Confederate ports. This was supposed to be under an international treaty, that hadn’t been signed yet, which had created the controversial political issues for Lincoln. Fortunate enough for the Union, when war broke out the United States Navy was small like it’s army, and its ships were scattered around the oceans. Of the American ships that were in surrounding waters, ten were partially destroyed or destroyed to prevent them from going to the Confederates when Virginia seceded. If they did this would have taken the Norfolk naval base with it.