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An illustration depicts the First Battle of Bull Run. Union soldiers and horses fall in disarray as Confederates attack; a crumpled American flag lies on the ground beneath the casualties.
The First Battle of Bull Run, which many Northerners thought would put a quick and decisive end to the South’s rebellion, ended with a Confederate victory.

Balance sheet: the union and the confederacy

As it became clearer that the Union would not be dealing with an easily quashed rebellion, the two sides assessed their strengths and weaknesses. At the onset on the war, in 1861 and 1862, they stood as relatively equal combatants.

The Confederates had the advantage of being able to wage a defensive war, rather than an offensive one. They had to protect and preserve their new boundaries, but they did not have to be the aggressors against the Union. The war would be fought primarily in the South, which gave the Confederates the advantages of the knowledge of the terrain and the support of the civilian population. Further, the vast coastline from Texas to Virginia offered ample opportunities to evade the Union blockade. And with the addition of the Upper South states, especially Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, the Confederacy gained a much larger share of natural resources and industrial might than the Deep South states could muster.

Still, the Confederacy had disadvantages. The South’s economy depended heavily on the export of cotton, but with the naval blockade, the flow of cotton to England, the region’s primary importer, came to an end. The blockade also made it difficult to import manufactured goods. Although the secession of the Upper South added some industrial assets to the Confederacy, overall, the South lacked substantive industry or an extensive railroad infrastructure to move men and supplies. To deal with the lack of commerce and the resulting lack of funds, the Confederate government began printing paper money, leading to runaway inflation ( [link] ). The advantage that came from fighting on home territory quickly turned to a disadvantage when Confederate armies were defeated and Union forces destroyed Southern farms and towns, and forced Southern civilians to take to the road as refugees. Finally, the population of the South stood at fewer than nine million people, of whom nearly four million were black slaves, compared to over twenty million residents in the North. These limited numbers became a major factor as the war dragged on and the death toll rose.

An image of a Confederate one hundred dollar bill is shown. In the lower left-hand corner is a portrait of Jefferson Davis; in the lower right-hand corner, a classically styled woman in a gown holds a garland. At the top of the bill, several black men toil in a field.
The Confederacy started printing paper money at an accelerated rate, causing runaway inflation and an economy in which formerly well-off people were unable to purchase food.

The Union side held many advantages as well. Its larger population, bolstered by continued immigration from Europe throughout the 1860s, gave it greater manpower reserves to draw upon. The North’s greater industrial capabilities and extensive railroad grid made it far better able to mobilize men and supplies for the war effort. The Industrial Revolution and the transportation revolution, beginning in the 1820s and continuing over the next several decades, had transformed the North. Throughout the war, the North was able to produce more war materials and move goods more quickly than the South. Furthermore, the farms of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Old Northwest, and the prairie states supplied Northern civilians and Union troops with abundant food throughout the war. Food shortages and hungry civilians were common in the South, where the best land was devoted to raising cotton, but not in the North.

Questions & Answers

A golfer on a fairway is 70 m away from the green, which sits below the level of the fairway by 20 m. If the golfer hits the ball at an angle of 40° with an initial speed of 20 m/s, how close to the green does she come?
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A mouse of mass 200 g falls 100 m down a vertical mine shaft and lands at the bottom with a speed of 8.0 m/s. During its fall, how much work is done on the mouse by air resistance
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2. A sled plus passenger with total mass 50 kg is pulled 20 m across the snow (0.20) at constant velocity by a force directed 25° above the horizontal. Calculate (a) the work of the applied force, (b) the work of friction, and (c) the total work.
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you have been hired as an espert witness in a court case involving an automobile accident. the accident involved car A of mass 1500kg which crashed into stationary car B of mass 1100kg. the driver of car A applied his brakes 15 m before he skidded and crashed into car B. after the collision, car A s
Samuel Reply
can someone explain to me, an ignorant high school student, why the trend of the graph doesn't follow the fact that the higher frequency a sound wave is, the more power it is, hence, making me think the phons output would follow this general trend?
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Nevermind i just realied that the graph is the phons output for a person with normal hearing and not just the phons output of the sound waves power, I should read the entire thing next time
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Follow up question, does anyone know where I can find a graph that accuretly depicts the actual relative "power" output of sound over its frequency instead of just humans hearing
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A string is 3.00 m long with a mass of 5.00 g. The string is held taut with a tension of 500.00 N applied to the string. A pulse is sent down the string. How long does it take the pulse to travel the 3.00 m of the string?
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Source:  OpenStax, U.s. history. OpenStax CNX. Jan 12, 2015 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3
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