Technology
...The slave society of the South in 1860 was a different economic order from the free-labor North. Riding on the extraordinary wealth, breadth, and reach of "King Cotton," which was worth more than all other American exports combined, the South simply did not develop the manufacturing, transportation, or financial-services sectors that had characterized northern economic growth since 1790. The value of slaves as property also exceeded the total investment in northern factories, railroads, and banks. But when it came to fighting a war, the South's slave system was no match for northern resources, especially as black Americans took advantage of the crisis to sabotage production and to make their way to Union lines. The Confederates' expectation of diplomatic and military help from cotton-hungry allies in Britain and France never materialized.
Introduction
Under extreme and prolonged stress, both human and mechanical systems sometimes reveal strengths they did not recognize before. They may unexpectedly also show fatal weaknesses. As both the North and the South mobilized for war, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the "free market" and the "slave labor" economic systems became increasingly clear - particularly in their ability to support and sustain a war economy. In hindsight, we can see that the growing divergences between the economies of the North and the South in the immediate prewar years had a decisive influence upon the conduct and outcome of the war itself.
The American economy was caught in transition on the eve of the Civil War. What had been an almost purely agricultural economy in 1800 was in the first stages of an industrial revolution which would result in the United States becoming one of the world's leading industrial powers by 1900. But the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the prewar years was almost exclusively limited...
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