In South Carolina the slave population outnumbered the white population by over 100,000. Moreover, as the 1860 census demonstrated, many Southern counties had a majority of non-white persons, slaves, which would not be conscripted into the war effort other than the usual tending of agricultural enterprises. The South only had nine million people with 110,000 employed as industrial workers. When the war came, the North had a total population of twenty-two million people of which 1.3 million worked as industrial workers. Yet is was the immense advantages of the North that ultimately allowed the Union cause to prevail as war goals and strategies transformed into unconditional surrender. Even a worried but confident Abraham Lincoln perceived his response as a “police action” designed to bring the recalcitrant states back in the Union. The advantages enjoyed by the North at the start of the American Civil War should have pointed toward a short confrontation, in line with General Winfield Scott’s initial estimation.
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