There were 22 million people in the North compared with only about 9 million in the South, which of those only a little over half were white. The North had a much greater industrial capacity with most of the factories being there. The Confederacy hoped to make up for its lack of materials by trading with Europe, but the Union used its naval strength to impose an increasingly tight blockade. The Union was aided even more by the fact that four slave states, Delaware, Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky, remained loyal to the Union. Nor were all the people within the 11 Confederate states committed to the Confederate cause. Slaves were also a potential fifth column. Throughout the war there was a steady flow of blacks fleeing to Union armies. The North converted first their labor and eventually their military manpower into a Union asset.
The Confederacy did have important advantages though. Southerners were defending their own land and homes, which may have encouraged them to fight that much harder than Northerners, who were fighting more for the preservation of the Union. In 1861 most Southerners were confident that, man for man, they were better soldiers than Northerners. The South placed more emphasis on martial virtues than the North. In 1860 most of the military colleges in the USA were in slave states. The elite of the nation’s generals had all been Southerners. Most military experts thought that farmers, who knew how to ride and shoot, made better soldiers than industrial workers. This proved to be wrong with the emergence of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, at the beginning of his military career, wasn't what would be an outstanding leader that he would be recognized as at the end of his military career. He served very well in the Mexican War but after that was assigned to an insignificant post and turned to drinking and was forced to resign his commission. He worked