Why Did The South Lose The Civil War Essay

Words: 797
Pages: 4

How important was slavery to the economy of the South? African slaves played an important role during the early days of the American economy due to shortage of labor. The fertile soil and favorable climate of the south made it an agrarian society where sugar, cotton, wheat, rice controlled the economy. However, with the shortage of labor the stakeholders bought African slaves and brought them to their plantations. The regions developed, industries developed too as they often employed slaves. Slaves were employed for domestic service in the urban areas and others worked in manufacturing, processing and transportation of food. The economy was boosted as the land owners had the option to use slaves instead of hiring white free laborers that costed …show more content…
The major reasons behind the this was due to the discovery of gold nuggets in the western parts of the nation e.g. California. The discovery of gold nuggets here caused a gold rush that drove thousands of people. They borrowed money, spent their life savings to make the trip to the west with the sole objective of making it into the gold mines.

Why did the South lose the war?
A number of factors contributed to the defeat of the south in their civil war with the north. The main reason being that the north had a population of around 22,000,000 people compared to the South’s 9,500,000 of which half of the South’s population was comprised of slaves. The slaves were used to provide labor in plantations and industries but not used in war.
The weaknesses of the south.
The weaknesses of the south were mainly that they had less equipped men, this made them to be outdone by the more equipped men from the north. The southerners had no unified purpose of the war and were not much aggressive. The other major weakness was that it had weak and bad military commanders the likes of Albert Sidney Johnstone, Braxton Bragg, and John Bell Hood among