18. The agricultural South lagged behind the North in production
One of the enduring myths of the Civil War is that the South was an agricultural society which was beaten because of the industrial superiority of its foe. While the North did exceed the South in industrial capacity, it also dwarfed the agricultural production of the Confederacy. Southern states produced nearly all of the nation’s rice and cotton, but in all other major crops, such as wheat, corn, and beans of all sorts, the Union out-produced the Confederacy at the beginning of the war, and continued to do so throughout. For example, in 1861 the Union’s farms produced over 100 million bushels of wheat to the Confederacy’s 35 million.
