Its land contained most of the country’s iron, coal, copper, and gold. The North controlled the seas, and its 21,000 miles of railroad track allowed troops and supplies to be transported wherever they were needed. The North’s greatest weakness was its military leadership.

Impact of the Emancipation Proclamation Black Americans were permitted to serve in the Union Army for the first time, and nearly 200,000 would do so by the end of the war. Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for the permanent abolition of slavery in the United States.

The Union outweighed the confederacy in almost every way; the number of states as well as the number of people. Despite the North’s larger population, the South had an army almost equal in size, during the first year of the war. The North had a greater industrial advantage.

The South’s greatest strength lay in the fact that it was fighting on the defensive in its own territory. Familiar with the landscape, Southerners could harass Northern invaders. The military and political objectives of the Union were much more difficult to accomplish.

Mr. Dowling The Civil War: Strengths and Weaknesses

Despite the North’s greater population, however, the South had an army almost equal in size during the first year of the war. The North had an enormous industrial advantage as well. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had only one-ninth the industrial capacity of the Union. But that statistic was misleading.

One of the struggles that the North had to contend with was that many people—mainly Northern Democrats—were dead set against the war. They felt that some kind of political compromise could’ve been achieved with the South on the fraught issue of slavery without the need for armed conflict.

Anaconda Plan. The Anaconda Plan was the Union’s plan to “strangle” the South by enacting a naval blockade, gaining control of the Mississippi River, and gradually increasing pressure on the South by land and sea. The Anaconda Plan was the long-term strategy of Union General Winfield Scott to cripple the South.

Their strategy was to take advantage of their compact geography, with internal lines of communication, their military heritage (Southerners had been disproportionately the officers of the United States Army), and their greater enthusiasm for their cause to wear down the Union will to wage war.

What led to the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in the history of North America? A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict. A key issue was states’ rights.