was guaranteed a decisive victory over the ill-equipped South. Northerners, prepared to endure the deprivation of war, were startled to find that they were experiencing an enormous industrial boom even after the first year of war. Indeed, the only Northern industry that suffered from the war was the carrying trade (Catton, Reflections 144). To the South, however, the war was a draining and debilitating leech, sucking the land dry of any semblance of economical formidability. No financial staple was left untouched; all were subject to diminishment and exhaustion. This agrarian South, with its traditional values and beliefs, decided not to cultivate two crops which would prove quite crucial in the outcome of the Civil War. Those crops were industry and progress, and without them the South was doomed to defeat. A wise man he was, that Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. A wise man indeed....
