===Modernizing the North===
The Republicans in Washington had a vision of an industrial nation, with great cities, efficient factories, productive farms, and high speed rail links. They wrote an elaborate program of economic modernization that had the dual purpose of winning the war and permanently transforming the economy. The tariff act of 1862 served not only to raise revenue, but also to encourage the establishment of factories free from British competition. Land grants went to railroad construction companies to open up the western plains and link up to California. Together with the free lands provided farmers by the Homestead Law the low-cost farm lands provided by the land grants speeded up the expansion of commercial agriculture. The North's most important war measure was perhaps the creation of a system of national banks that provided a sound currency for the industrial expansion. Even more important, the hundreds of new banks that were allowed to open were required to purchase government bonds. Thereby the nation monetized the potential wealth represented by farms, urban buildings, factories, and businesses, and immediately turned that money over to the Treasury for war needs. The Confederacy by contrast bankrupted its financial institutions by flooding the South with paper money that was not backed by real wealth or by a workable system of taxes. The basic philosophy of the Confederacy was that patriotic families should sacrifice their wealth for their new nation. Many did so, and became impoverished in the process. The philosophy in the North was it was profitable to be patriotic--to buy war bonds, to start a new bank, to bid on a war contract.
==Emancipate the slaves=Emancipation===
The decision to destroy slavery was a fateful one for Lincoln and the Republican Party in 1862. Still denying the reality of Confederate nationalism, they had concluded that the rich, arrogant slave owners were entirely at fault for the rebellion. They controlled the Richmond government, and officered the rebel army. To defeat the enemy it was essential to defeat its main source of strength--the system of slavery. The plight of the black slaves themselves was a concern for some of the Republicans, but not the primary motivation. The advantages in arming tens of thousands of black soldiers were unclear in 1862. There was no doubt however, that the decision to declare emancipation ripped apart the fabric of the North's political system, as the majority of Democrats repudiated the war effort, refused to enlist, and redoubled their efforts to defeat the Republicans. They scored important successes in the 1862 elections, which were largely a referendum on emancipation. The Republicans, however, continued to control the national government, the military, and most state governments. They also controlled most business and financial institutions everywhere in the North. The worst fear of the white south was a slave insurrection, and the Emancipation Proclamation appeared to be a clear warning that was coming. In actual practice, slaves ran away from their masters whenever Union armies approached (assuming their masters had not already transported them further south). There were no slave insurrections, no uprisings. But there was the even deeper fear of racial equality. Southern whites (and probably most northerners too) were strongly convinced that the black race was morally inferior to them. The Confederate position was that unending resistance was the only way to block emancipation and the systematic degradation of the white race.
===Sherman's March through Georgia: 1864===
By 1864 Grant and Sherman realized the weakest point of the armies opposing them was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure and deliberately sought to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin railroads and bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust. "I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and ruin are synonymous terms." It took a while to secure the approval of Lincoln and Grant, for Sherman's plan was to ignore the Confederate army and strike instead at the Confederate nation. Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched, but the actual damage was confined to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of Georgia. Much more important than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment.* Sherman, who unlike Grant had been deeply involved in the Seminole War, knew that the way to defeat Indians was to strike at their villages and especially their food supply, and that winter campaigns especially effective. Thus Sherman struck at Georgia in October, November and December, and while Grant and Lee were in quiet winter quarters in the next three months, Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia.<ref>Hattaway & Jones p 452; Foote 2:709 Joseph T. Glatthaar, ''The March to the Sea and Beyond'' (1995) p 6</ref>
==Destruction==
===War dead===
The war produced about 970,000 military casualties North and South (3% of the total population), including approximately 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. The 10,500 battles and engagements produced about 1,1 million killed and wounded. The Union army and navy lost 110,100 killed in action (including mortally wounded who died in hospitals), and another 224,580 who died of disease. The Confederate army 94,000 in battle and another 164,000 who died of disease. Official counts of the wounded are far too low, at 275,000 for the Union and 194,000 for the Confederacy.<ref> For details see Thomas L. Livermore, ''Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America 1861-65'' (1901) [http://books.google.com/books?id=jthCAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:Numbers+intitle:and+intitle:Losses+intitle:in+intitle:the+intitle:Civil+intitle:War&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0 full text online]; and William F. Fox, ''Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1867-1865'' (1889). see also [http://www.civilwarhome.com/links13.htm#casualties websites dealing with the casualty count]</ref>
===Civilian destruction===
The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Southern state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky Missouri, and Indian Territory; Pennsylvania was the only northerner state to be the scene of major action, during the Gettysburg campaign. In the Confederacy there was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56% of them, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however by the time the action took place some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.
The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.
The economic calamity suffered by the South during the war affected every family. Except for land, most assets and investments had vanished with slavery, but debts were left behind. Worst of all were the human deaths and amputations. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:<ref> John Samuel Ezell, ''The South since 1865'' 1963 pp 27-28</ref>
:One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes. . . . Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration.
Railroad mileage was of course located mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.<ref> Paul F. Paskoff, "Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy," ''Civil War History'' 54.1 (2008) 35-62</ref>
==See also==