What were the disadvantages of the North during the US Civil War?

Answer 1

Lack of the Union's advantages, which were:

Much bigger population from which to recruit armies.

Traditional advantage in artillery, including new rifled cannon

Industrial capability - access to all kinds of war-supplies

More railroad mileage - whole armies could move by train

Big enough navy to blockade Southern coast

Most talented President the Americans ever had

Answer 2

The main disadvantages of the North were that they had to either defeat so many Confederate armies that the South would have to surrender. The problem was that Northern generals had to fight a offensive war to do this. And, they had to fight mostly in enemy territory, always a risk. Since the South only needed the North to give up their struggle to conquer the South, Southern generals could rely on good defensive. This would cause the North heavy casualties and perhaps the war would lose support among the people of the North. The other major disadvantage was that three of the Border slave states that did not join the Confederacy, could change their minds and become enemy states to the Union. This would have ended the war in the South's favor.

Answer 3

The North didn't have as much motivation to fight as the South did because not everyone in the North was an abolitionist and didn't agree with the motive to go to war with the South whereas everyone in the South fought for one purpose and were all motivated to fight to reserves state rights, people in the North were angry because of the draft, the North had to transport soldiers farther to battles, and the North also didn't have as good of generals.

Answer 4

1 -The geographical features of the Confederacy. The territory of the seceded States formed a rough quadrilateral of about a million square's mile. No through roads penetrated this enormous area. Inside the large part of it, roads were of local significance only and didn't connect with others existing in neighbouring states.

The Appalachians offered a valuable defensive barrier against offensive from Union territory in the Midwest and protected Northern Virginia and the Carolinas from an invasion. The region could only be 1invaded from the north, through Virginia or the south, via Alabama or by marching round through the bottom of the Appalachians.

This region, however was hard to be penetrated because the Ohio and its big tributaries, the Cumberland and the Tennessee formed a line which protected the central Upper South and the Mississippi with which they connected, left the Union but any chance of penetration.

2 -To win the war the Union had to destroy the Confederate Armies or forcing them to surrender and conquer the whole, immense southern territory, because there were but few vital objectives to conquer, each of ones located, far away hundreds of miles one another.

That meant that an invading force had to sustain a great logistic effort in order to maintain its fighting efficiency, detaching along the way of its advance a considerable part of its effectives to garrison and defend their exposed lines of communication from the raids of the redoubtable Confederate cavalry.

3 - The " Home Front" of the Union was not compact as that of the Confederacy and Lincoln had to deal with political currents undermining his administration and ready to negatively influence the public opinion by exploiting military failures, stalemates and the increasing amount of losses in battle.

This way of disagreement led sometimes to be considered like very close to a real treason and often produced among the people a feeling of weariness towards the war, which hampered the conduct of the war at least from the standpoint of the internal politics, for the desire of a peace of compromise was more and more growing, starting about from the middle of 1864.

Answer 5

bad questioin