What advantages and disadvantages did the Union and Confederacy each possess at the start of the Civil War?
The North had a larger population, more industry, a superior transportation system, and an existing army and navy. The South had a population skilled in the use of firearms and only had to wage a defensive war. • Why was the Civil War more deadly than past wars? Because new weapons were much more lethal and accurate than earlier weapons; and because the Civil War expanded warfare beyond the battlefield, creating total war. • Ask your students which of the following two viewpoints on the Emancipation Proclamation is most accurate. In October 1862, the London Times dismissed the preliminary emancipation proclamation as an empty gesture. “Where he has no power Mr. Lincoln will set the Negroes free,” the newspaper commented; “where he retains power he will consider them as slaves. This is more like a Chinaman beating his two swords together to frighten his enemy than like an earnest man pressing forward his cause.” The American philosopher, orator, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson took a very
