on, Reflections 144). Southern plantation owners erred in believing that the growing textile industries of England and France were highly dependent on their cotton, and that, in the event of war, those countries would come to their rescue ("Civil War," World Book). They believed that the North would then be forced to acquiesce to the "perfect" Southern society. They were wrong. During the war years, the economical superiority of the Union, which had been so eminent before the war, was cemented. The Civil War gave an even bigger boost to the already growing factories in the North. The troops needed arms and warm clothes on a constant basis, and Northern Industry was glad to provide them. By 1862, the Union could boast of its capacity to manufacture almost all of its own war materials using its own resources (Brinkley et al. 415). The South, on the other hand, was fatally dependent on outside resources for its war needs. Dixie was not only lagging far behind in the factories. It had also chosen to disregard two other all-important areas in which the North had chosen to thrive: transportation and communication. . . . the Railroad, the Locomotive, and the Telegraph- -iron, steam, and lightning-these three mighty genii of civilization . . . will know no lasting pause until the whole vast line of railway shall completed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Furnas 357) During the antebellum years, the North American populace especially had shown a great desire for an effective mode of transportation. For a long time, canals had been used to transport people and goods across large amounts of land which were accessible by water, but, with continuing growth and expansion, these canals were becoming obsolete and a symbol of frustration to many Northerners. They simply needed a way to transport freight and passengers across terrains where waterways did not exist (Brinkley et al. 256-59). The first glimmer of hope came as America's first primitive loc...
