Paper Summary:

The American Civil War was a conflict between the Northern and Southern sections of the United States, but it was, according to the author of the paper, a conflict between the romantic and the modern. The writer contends that both sides entered the war with romantic ideas of how war ought to be fought and slowly became disabused of these ideas by the terrible reality of slaughter on the Civil War battlefield. The writer continues and states that once the reality of war was understood, the North enjoyed two distinct advantages: It possessed a corps of leaders who were able to adapt to the new conditions of warfare and superior material and industrial resources, which are ultimately what determine victory in modern war. In the paper, the author examines these factors and how, in his opinion, they contributed to the North's victory.

From the Paper:

"Civilians then, are the true object of war: "the humane thing is to overcome them by means of hunger and nakedness. The earlier we can do so, the less effusion of blood." Bierce acknowledge that the Union had gone through a learning process. "I speak of the latter part of the conflict, when we had learned how to conduct military operations. As long as our main purpose was bloodshed we made little progress." Northern victory in the Civil War was inevitable because in modern warfare the means of production translate directly into military power. In this regard, the South was extraordinarily weak compared to the North. But the Union victory was only achieved when Northern commanders realized the true nature of the war and prosecuted it accordingly. By the end of the war, Northern industry was turning out unlimited quantities of repeating rifles, breech-loading artillery, and iron clad warships. The South had lost even its never very great capacity to make muskets. This disparity was at one and the same time the cause and effect of the Northern victory."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bierce, Ambrose. n. d. "The Nature of War", in Russell Duncan and David J. Klooster, eds. 2002. Phantoms of a Blood-Stained period: the Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 309-10.
• Elmer Ellsworth and the Zouave Craze. 2000. http://192.220.64.117/craze.html (accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
• Famous American Duels. 2005. http://www.law.gwu.edu/Burns/rarebooks/exhibits/duel_american.htm (accessed Apr. 26, 2008).
• Keegan, John. 1987. The Mask of Command. New York: Viking.
• Kiley, Kevin, 2005. Napoleon Himself. http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/napoleon/c_quotes.html#war (accessed Apr. 26, 2008).

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