What advantage did the South have over the North during the Civil War?
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Answer

The south had General Lee and he was a better general than McClellan.

Answer

The best answer is leadership, Lee, Jackson, Forrest, Johnston, Hill, Longstreet, the list goes on and on and history shows this to be the case. Untill Lincoln found Grant the union was stumbling. Another point is the southerns themselves, mostly farm boys, quite experienced with hunting and horses, as compared to the northen urbanites.

Answer

Cotton & Tobbacco...the biggest US exports and in huge demand by the rest of the world. A strong agricultural base, partially due to climate and aided by slave labor.

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The South had a much better developed martial tradition. Southerners typically had more military training, so, at least at the outset of the war, the Confederate Army was much better led than the Union. The South also had more fighting spirit, in part because it was their territory being invaded.

Material resources, particularly manufactured goods, were in seriously short supply, and the weakness at sea made it pretty much impossible to do much about it.

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The Southenes were defending their homeland. Usually the one defending has a military advantage but if they are defending on their own country, then they have even greater advantage.

Ans



I'm jumping back in....hey...losing site of the Q and saying terribly biased things...like the South was invaded? The South defected to start and then it attacked the North! And as you yahoos may not yet understand or still keep on trying to change...after being the defectors, led by what can only be considered traitors (which it seems some of the ancestors now want to feel is something to take pride in), and after attacking it's previously benevolent parent, the Confederacy tried and did cause tremendous damage/death to others. Trying to conquer others (they wanted to control everything) and did so by raping, pillaging and then burning the northern assets, (incl the Whitehouse for example). Moreover, it did this while the World ridiculed it. It didn't have nor could it find a friend or supporter anywhere. (FACT - not ONE country, including the French or British, who by no means really liked the US as it was, and in fact each had wars with the US within years of the civil war), would even acknowlege the Confederacy as a country or soverign nation (even with the South trying to extort their support by using Tobbacco and Cotton). Without acknowlegement as a Country, they can't print money accepted anywhere else, etc. But most importantly, it just goes to show they were, in the eyes of the rest of the world, just anarchist/terrorist disloyal defectors with bad ideas, that no other government would take seriously. Like the vile terrorists, treason-ists of today...with ideas to control all others and insisting it's their right to do so, because they are simply superior in Gods eyes....and hence they can't do wrong. All must submit!

It means that the Confederacy was never a country in anyones eyes but its own (which makes it being invaded by the government everyone see's as controlling it an impossibility). To further explain what others clearly see - you can't invade your own land, even if it does have confederate defector treason-ists residing there and claiming control.

And contrary to all that pride and huff and puff - it then lost - badly - as a warrior. In a war it started, against an opponent that didn't even have a way to draft or enlist an army for this war, even after it was attacked.

"The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. In the ten weeks between the fall of Fort Sumter and the convening of Congress in July 1861, Lincoln began drafting men for military service, approved a naval blockade of Southern ports, and suspended the writ of HABEAS CORPUS. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Lincoln's authority to take these actions in the Prize cases, 67 U.S. (2 Black) 635, 17 L. Ed. 459; 70 U.S. (3 Wall.) 451, 18 L. Ed. 197; 70 U.S. (3 Wall.) 514, 18 L. Ed. 200; 70 U.S. 559, 18 L. Ed. 220 (1863). The Court concluded that the president had the authority to resist force without the need for special legislative action.




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