How accurate/Abstract is Industrialization of the North in Gameplay?

[Sid Meier]

Will the game be able to resemble Northern industrial might as it was historically? For example historically the economic output of new York state was greater then the whole confederacy combined.

---They also catalyzed the latent national power which the United States possessed, transforming it into the greatest military nation on earth before its post-1865 demobilization. From amateur beginnings, the armed forces of each side turned themselves into mass conscript armies, employing modern rifled artillery and small arms, grinding away in the siege warfare of northern Virginia or being shuttled en masse by rail to the western theaters, communicating by telegraph to army headquarters, and drawing upon the resources of a mobilized war economy; the naval campaigns, moreover, witnessed the first use of ironclads, of rotating turrets, of early torpedos and mines, and of swift, steam-driven commerce raiders. Since this conflict much more then either the Crimean struggle or Prussia's wars of unification lays claim to beng the first real industrialized "total war" on proto-twentieth-century lines, it is worth noting why the North won.

The first and most obvious reason--assuming that willpower would remain equal on each side--was the disproportion in resources and population. It may have been true that the South enjoyed the morale advantag of figting for its very existence and (usually) on its own soil; that it could call upon a higher proportion of white males who were used to riding and shooting; that it possessed determined and good-quality generals and that, for a long while, it could import munitions and other supplies to make up for its materiel deficiencies. But none of these could fully compensate for the great numberical imbalance between the North and the South. While the former contained a population of approximately 20 million whites, the Confederacy had only six million. What was more, the Union's total was steadily enhanced by immigrants (more than 800,000 arrived between 1861 and 1865) and by the 1862 decision to enlist black troops--something which the South avoided, predictably enough, until the last few months of the of the war. Around two million men served in the Union Army, which reached a peak strength of about one million in 1864-1865, whereas only about 900,000 men fought for the Confederacy, whose maximum strength was never more then 464,500--from which "peak," reached in late 1863, it slowly declined.

... In 1860 the North possessed 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South's 18,000 (and many relied upon the North's technical expertise and skilled labourers); the Confederacy produced only 36,700 tons of Pig Iron, whereas Pennsylvania's total alone was 580,000 tons; New York state manufactured almost 300 million$ worth of Goods--well over four times the production of Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi combined. This staggering disparity in economic base of each belligerent steadily transformed itslef into real military effectiveness.

For example, whereas the South could make very few rifles (chiefly from the machinery captured at Harper's Ferry) and heavily relied upon imports, the North massively expanded its home manufactures of rifles, of whcih nearly 1.7million were produced. The North's railway system (some 22,000 miles in length, and fanning out from the east to the southwest) could be maintained, and even expanded, during the war; the South's mere 9,000 miles of track, and inadequate supplies of locomotives and rolling stock, was gradually worn out. Similarly, while neither side possessed much of a navy at the outset of the conflict, the South was disadvantaged by having no machine shop which could build marine engines, whereas the North possessed several dozen such establishments. Although it took timne for the Union's maritime supremacy to make itself felt--during which period blockade runners brought European made munitions to the Confederate Army, and Southern commerce raiders inflicted heavy losses upon the North's merchant marine-the net slowly and inexorable tightened arounfd the South's ports. By December 1864 the Union's navy totaled some 671 ships, included 236 steam vessels built since the wars beginning... It was effective and successful use of combined rail and water transport which aided the Union's offensives in the western theater.

Finally the Confederates found it impossible to pay for the war... By contrast the North could always raise enough money, from taxation and loans, to pay for the conflict; and its printing of greenbacks in some ways stimulated further industrial and economic growth. Impressively the Union's productivity surged again during the war, not only in munitions, railway building, and ironclad construction, but also in agricultural output. By the end of the war, Northern soldiers were probably better fed and supplied than any army in history. If there was going to be a particularily American way approach to military conflict--an "American way of war" to use Professor Weigley's phrase--then it was first forged gere, in the Union's mobilization and deployment of its massive industrial-technological potential to crush its foe.

In my gameplay experiance I usually have to try pretty hard to make the North industrially strong enough (via promoting a tonne of capitalists) to curb stomp the South, with the result that AI USA tends to be in SP anyways nowhere near as strong industrially as it could be.

This tends to hold true for others as well.

In game are weoing to be seeing realworld-ish numbers like in the above quoted text from Paul kennedy or something really abstract?

 

[keynes2.0]

It's all kind of irrelevant so long as divisions left over from the mexican-american war are able to overrun the CSA in the first 12 months of it's existence...

But I think it's important to think not only in terms of northern industrial might but also southern industrial weakness. The north was a growing industrial power but was still primarily agricultural. The south was an agricultural region with a tiny industrial base. The north could have a moderate industrial power and still be at an advantage so long as the southern industry is as weak as it should be. But if you wanted to model the Virginia steel works as a steel factory, then Pennsylvania is going to need a steel factory at double digits capacity to properly model the disparity.

 

[Cinéad IV]

By having the national focus on New York or New England, I'm pretty sure a USA player will be able to build the kind of industry (and, more importantly, attract the number of immigrants), that gave the north the advantages it had.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

This was not yet the industrial age, factory output did not matter as much because you could equip armies on a relatively low-tech level (by to WW1 standards) and still fight a decent war with them.

The Confederacy needed trained men, first and foremost, that was their primary need. Cannons and rifles and ammunition also, but not as urgently as they needed manpower.

Also even though locomotives, telegraphs and ironclads were already around, they did not have the importance they would have later on (WW1) so you could well fight and win a war without them.

South America had one hell of a bloody war in the 1870s and that was fought on a very low-tech level by WW1 standards. Paraguay lost it because they ran out of manpower... they also lacked weapons but that was not the determining factor.

So industry is all nice and dandy, but the balance of forces in the 19th century should be determined first and foremost by the army sizes and the numbers of able bodied recruits available on each side.

 

[telesien]

This was not yet the industrial age, factory output did not matter as much because you could equip armies on a relatively low-tech level (by to WW1 standards) and still fight a decent war with them.

The Confederacy needed trained men, first and foremost, that was their primary need. Cannons and rifles and ammunition also, but not as urgently as they needed manpower.

Also even though locomotives, telegraphs and ironclads were already around, they did not have the importance they would have later on (WW1) so you could well fight and win a war without them.

South America had one hell of a bloody war in the 1870s and that was fought on a very low-tech level by WW1 standards. Paraguay lost it because they ran out of manpower... they also lacked weapons but that was not the determining factor.

So industry is all nice and dandy, but the balance of forces in the 19th century should be determined first and foremost by the army sizes and the numbers of able bodied recruits available on each side.

That is an interesting argument which leads into another possibility. Scaled need for weapons as technological progress goes on. Like training infantry unit in 1836-10 small arms, training infantry unit in 1914-20 small arms and 2 artillery. This probably won't be in when the game is released, but it can be interesting idea for future mod...

 

[HMS Enterprize]

Will the game be able to resemble Northern industrial might as it was historically? For example historically the economic output of new York state was greater then the whole confederacy combined.

When reading articles quoting the impressive statistical outputs of the North, I find myself asking, so why did it take so long for the North to win? Is this economic 'might' a white elephant somewhat?

Maybe as Leviathan07 suggests, the economics of the period are somewhat overstated in importance. Maybe, I dunno...

 

[Sute]{h]

Civil wars tend to be very bloody affairs. Where "normal" wars end in a peace settlement giving a few consessions to the victor there can be no such peace in a civil war. One side has to wipe out the other. Thus it is total war, where your opponent fights hard for every square meter of land.

The American Civil War is still the most lethal war the US has ever had, especially if you put the number of casualities relative to the population. Interestingly enough the north had roughly 100.000 more casualties than the south. Probably a combination of poor officers and being on the offensive.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

 

[Cinéad IV]

A lot of the Confederate success, I think, can be laid at the feet of the Confederate generals.
But in the end, the CSA lost the war for the same reason as Paraguay would lose the War of the Triple Alliance: smaller manpower than the other belligerents.

You can have the best officers going, and the army with the highest morale, but in modern warfare there are only so many casualties that a nation can take, and in that respect, the smaller nation is always going to face an uphill struggle.

 

[GrafKeks]

A lot of the Confederate success, I think, can be laid at the feet of the Confederate generals.
But in the end, the CSA lost the war for the same reason as Paraguay would lose the War of the Triple Alliance: smaller manpower than the other belligerents.

You can have the best officers going, and the army with the highest morale, but in modern warfare there are only so many casualties that a nation can take, and in that respect, the smaller nation is always going to face an uphill struggle.

Modern Warfare today makes numbers somewhat irrelevant technologic and industry is what matters most (And if you´ve enough H1-Bombs nothing matters anymore )

But I hope it´s possible to really over-outproduce the CSA as the USA

 

[Nitjanirasu]

...other countries had industrialised Norths too, you know...

 

[SirGrotius]

One wonders if the Confederate soldier, on balance, was superior to the Northern. Perhaps firing skill, endurance, and cool outfits...

 

[keynes2.0]

The successes of the south are overstated by focusing on the east. In the east, the south put their best men, equipment and generals and logistics weren't much of an issue. They essentially had parity with the north resulting in 4 years of status quo. The northern campaigns in the east all fizzled out and the southern campaigns were both fiascos. In the west, the northern industrial might and logistics could be brought to bear and they had the advantage in nearly every battle. Unsurprisingly, the western front was a long string of steady northern victories. By the time Sherman did his march to the sea in '64, the north had occupied the entire Mississippi river and marched straight along western Appalachia. While Lee was guarding the front door, Grant and Sherman had kicked down the back door and taken the entire house. It took a long time because there was a lot of terrain to cover.

 

[naggy]

One wonders if the Confederate soldier, on balance, was superior to the Northern. Perhaps firing skill, endurance, and cool outfits...

Well, they sure as heck thought they were.

I would venture to say that there was no real difference - both sides drew quite a few people from the West (where more people carried firearms habitually, especially in areas where Indians still caused trouble occasionally). The North had plenty of farmers, just like the south, so endurance wouldn't be a big difference either (except that the Northerners would be more used to cold).

keynes2.0 brings up a very important point: the key Southern advantage was that the South had better generalship and could fight defensively in the East. In the west, where they had second-tier generalship and had to defend more open space, they steadily lost.

Of course, that was Winfield Scott's plan (Anaconda Plan) from the beginning. Had the North had the ability at the start of the war to fully implement the plan, they quite possibly could have won the war much faster.

 

[Petrarca]

But I hope it´s possible to really over-outproduce the CSA as the USA

What good are efficient sawmills and fashionable men's hats in fighting a war?

A grossly higher GDP is, as others pointed out, helpful only if you're both short of indigenous armaments industries and have to use your industrial and agricultural earnings to purchase arms from the world markets.

Both the USA and the CSA were heavy into butter and not so much into guns. Steel production was not the be all, end all that it became in the 20th century, as Leviathan says. Some European historian-- van Creveld?-- describes the conflict as being one of light infantry, which implies the low material requirements that were needed.

The CSA was perennially short of new artillery. But this was the least important piece of the combat needs triad, with rifles and ready soldiers being more significant. Their logistics were worse, and they had more combat ineffectives as a result. But putting men into the field was still the most crucial element by far, so long as they could be armed and led .

 

[keynes2.0]

Cannons killed more men in the civil war then bullets. And both of them together were outdone by malnutrition and disease. So I'd say the order of effectiveness would be:

butter>cannons>guns

 

[Petrarca]

Cannons killed more men in the civil war then bullets. And both of them together were outdone by malnutrition and disease. So I'd say the order of effectiveness would be:

butter>cannons>guns

The CSA used older artillery, rather than no artillery at all. Otherwise, where was their contribution to Union shrapnel casualties? And again, both sides suffered horrendously from disease and other non-combat afflictions. More developed Union shipbuilding and paper manufacturing did not solve logistical problems or provide repeating rifles to the troops.

Clearly, having a more industrialized economy was not a panacea. The CSA was able to use older, less effective cannon and replenish the ranks of their soldiers. They suffered losses at a higher rate, but nowhere near what you think to imply by considering the civilian economic preponderance of the Union as the determining factor.

 

[keynes2.0]

I'm not saying that butter alone will win the war, but in point of fact, that Union butter DID buy a lot of repeating rifles by the end of the war that the confederates couldn't afford. You can't have guns without the butter to pay for it.

 

[naggy]

The CSA used older artillery, rather than no artillery at all. Otherwise, where was their contribution to Union shrapnel casualties? And again, both sides suffered horrendously from disease and other non-combat afflictions. More developed Union shipbuilding and paper manufacturing did not solve logistical problems or provide repeating rifles to the troops.

It did, however, provide troops with paper to send letters home, so that we could have all those documentaries about the Civil War with comments from their letters.

 

[naggy]

I'm not saying that butter alone will win the war, but in point of fact, that Union butter DID buy a lot of repeating rifles by the end of the war that the confederates couldn't afford. You can't have guns without the butter to pay for it.

In 1865, the Confederates were so screwed, the Federals almost could win the war with sticks of butter.

The repeating rifles came into wide service at the point when the war was already largely won.

 

[Sid Meier]

When reading articles quoting the impressive statistical outputs of the North, I find myself asking, so why did it take so long for the North to win? Is this economic 'might' a white elephant somewhat?

Maybe as Leviathan07 suggests, the economics of the period are somewhat overstated in importance. Maybe, I dunno...

Everyone in this thread should really pick up "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy" it explains all of this.

Within another year, of course the Civil War had begun to transform the amount of national resources which Americans devoted to military purposes. The origins and causes are not for discussion here; but since the leadership of both sides had determined upon a fight to the finish, and since each side could call upon hundreds of thousands of men, the struggle was likely to be prolonged. What made it more so was the distances involved, with the "front" ranging from the Virginia coast to the Mississippi, and even farther westward into Missouri and Arkansas--much of this being forest, mountain range, and swamplands. Similarly, the North's blockade of its foes' ports involved patrolling a coastline as extensive as that between Hamburg and Genoa. Crushing the South, in other words, would be an extraordinarily difficult logistical and military task, especially for a people which had kept its armed forces to a minium and had no experience of large-scale war.

...... If all the above sounds too deterministic an explanation for the outcome of a conflict which seems to sway backwards and forward for nearly four years, then it may be worth stressing the fundamental strategical problem which faced the South. Given the imbalances in size and population, there was no way in which it could overrun the North; the best that could be achieved was to so blunt the enemy's armies, and willpower, that he would abandon his policy of coercion and amit the South's claims (to slavery, or to secede or both). This strategy would have been greatly aided if the border states like Kentucky or Maryland had overwhelmingly voted to join the Confederacy, which simply didn't happen; and it would have helped beyond measure if a foreign power like Britain had intervened, but to suppose that was likely was a staggering misreading of British political priorities in the early 1860's. With the exclusion of those two possibilities of swinging the overall military balance in favor of the South, the Confederates were simply left with the strategy of resisting te Union's pressures and hoping that a majority of Northerners would tire of the war. But that meant, unavoidably a long drawn out conflict--and the lengthier the war was, the more the Union could mobilize its greater resources, boost its munitions production, lay down hundreds of warships, and inexorably squeeze the South, by naval blockade, by unrelenting military pressure in northern Virginia, by long range campaigning in the west, and by Sherman's devastating drives through enemy territories. As the South's economy, morale, and frontline forces waned--by the beginning of 1865 its "present for duty" troops total was down to 155,000 men--surrender was the only realistic choice left.