The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 and the secession of South Carolina a little more than a month later signaled the inevitability of war between the states. And with the first shot fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Confederacy officially declared war on the Union, thus truly making the United States its deplored enemy. In all the hype that surrounded those opening days of the conflict, especially following the Union defeat at First Manassas, the South seemed so much closer to defeating its enemy than ever before. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, however, the North would not be their only foe in this conflict. The Confederate States of America would have to battle an equally powerful and destructive force: economics.
At the outset of the War, Confederate officials knew of the grave importance to become a more industrial society. Without a solid industrial base, there would not be ample resources available for the manufacturing of cannon and firearms, rail lines to transport men, food, and equipment, and perhaps most importantly, money to keep the Confederate treasury in operation. Thus, the pressure to industrialize in a short period of time placed heavy strain on the South. Because most white men were off fighting for their glorious cause, the South depended heavily on the labor of free blacks, slaves, and women to fill in the gaps in both agriculture and industry. Unlike in the highly populated North, this high demand for labor in the South was never completely filled, industry was never brought up to desired levels, and the success of the Confederate economy would quickly falter.
The South's number one economic resource, agriculture, took a serious hit during the War. Shortages in salt for meat preservation and in food itself become prevalent as the War continued into its second, third, and fourth years. As James MacPherson (1992) points out:
The causes of these increasingly severe shortages were manifold. The antebellum South had imported most of its salt from the North or abroad, and efforts to develop domestic sources during the war never caught up with demand. Almost all the South's railroad iron and locomotives had also come from the North or England; without a sufficient industrial base to develop replacement capacity, the Confederacy's railroads rapidly deteriorated even when they were not destroyed be the armies. With military shipments on rails having priority, food for domestic consumption rotted in trackside warehouses while women and children went hungry (p. 377)
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