War Readiness Quotes
In WWII as later, defense contractors and military weapons designers were always trying to improve the design and proto-models, thus stalling production and utilization. Arnold’s statement galvanized the program and B-29s reached the Pacific theater to help win the war.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
This was one of the perceived advantages of the South—that the North, with its more complex and sophisticated society, would pay a higher economic price by fighting than the South would. Southern whites didn’t work or farm much and they could fight and the older men and slaves could keep the agriculture and economy going. However, the huge superiority of the North in productivity and technology, in farming, manufacturing, transportation and military offset the Southern advantage do a great degree. But when the North attracted so many of the Southern Negro slaves to their lines, the Southern labor force was diminished greatly for the first time. And Sherman’s March showed how the entire Southern economy could be crippled and the war was strategically lost by the Confederates. The reality of superiority of the North and the attitude of elites like Emerson in freely discussing that fact, was resented by Southerners then and since. There is to this day a Southern resentment of intellectuals and highly educated people—a vestige of the reality of differences existing in the 1860s and since. It was not until the 1950s that the South started developing educational and cultural institutions and populace that is on a par with the rest of the nation. But the states which spend less per capita on educational and cultural institutions, tend to have the poorest educational attainments of their citizens and they are mostly states of the deep South where values are still somewhat different from the North.
See {637854} for a quote on the soundness of our military planning.
He was not aware of it but the Union War Department had prepared well and additional ironclad ships under construction of which the Monitor was just the first. Lincoln had approved the construction of ironclads on October 4, 1861. The Confederate Merrimack was larger and to the layman was the stronger ship but the Monitor did some damage and drove the Confederate Merrimac from the field to make repairs. The Confederacy, with minimal industrial steel-making capacity could not produce enough steel to protect more ships than the one ironclad Merrimack. The Union Navy, not only were building more Monitor class ships, but also, had a few Merrimack type wooden ships being iron clad as well as their Monitors as Strong had called for. The Union soon totally dominated the seas and as important, the rivers with which they could supply Union troops and bombard Confederate cities built thereupon.
