Editing Confederate States of America (section)

==Economy==
{{Main|Economy of the Confederate States of America}}

===Slaves===
Across the South, widespread rumors predicted the slaves were planning insurrection, causing panic. [[Slave patrol|Patrols]] were stepped up. The slaves did become increasingly independent and resistant to punishment, but historians agree there were no insurrections. Many slaves became spies for the North, and large numbers ran away to federal lines.<ref>{{cite book |first=Bell Irvin |last=Wiley |title=Southern Negroes, 1861–1865 |year=1938 |pages=21, 66–69 }}</ref>

According to the [[1860 United States census]], about 31% of free households in the eleven states that would join the Confederacy owned slaves. The 11 states that seceded had the highest percentage of slaves as a proportion of their population, representing 39% of their total population. The proportions ranged from a majority in South Carolina (57.2%) and Mississippi (55.2%) to about a quarter in Tennessee (24.8%).

Lincoln's [[Emancipation Proclamation]] on January 1, 1863, legally freed three million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy. The long-term effect was that the Confederacy could not preserve the institution of slavery and lost the use of the core element of its plantation labor force. Over 200,000 freed slaves were hired by the federal army as teamsters, cooks, launderers and laborers, and eventually as soldiers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Martha S. Putney|title=Blacks in the United States Army: Portraits Through History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3EcLw6H38kC&pg=PA13|year=2003|publisher=McFarland|page=13|isbn=978-0786415939}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.historynet.com/african-americans-in-the-civil-war|title= African Americans In The Civil War|work= History Net: Where History Comes Alive – World & US History Online}}</ref> Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army.<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon F. |last=Litwack |title=Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery |location=New York |publisher=Knopf |year=1979 |pages=30–36, 105–166 |isbn=0-394-50099-7 }}</ref>

Though the [[Forty acres and a mule|concept was promoted within certain circles]] of the Union hierarchy during and immediately following the war, no program of reparations for freed slaves was ever attempted. Unlike other Western countries, such as Britain and France, the U.S. government never paid compensation to Southern slave owners for their "lost property". The only place [[compensated emancipation]] was carried out was the [[District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act|District of Columbia]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Michael |editor-last=Vorenberg |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents |year=2010 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Peter |last=Kolchin |title=Reexamining Southern Emancipation in Comparative Perspective |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-southern-history_2015-02_81_1/page/n8 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=81 |issue=1 |year=2015 |pages=7–40 }}</ref>

===Political economy===
The plantations of the South, with white ownership and an enslaved labor force, produced substantial wealth from cash crops. It supplied two-thirds of the world's cotton, which was in high demand for textiles, along with tobacco, sugar, and naval stores (such as [[turpentine]]). These [[raw material]]s were exported to factories in Europe and the Northeast. Planters reinvested their profits in more slaves and fresh land, as cotton and tobacco depleted the soil. There was little manufacturing or mining; shipping was controlled by non-southerners.<ref>"Thomas1979" pp. 13–14</ref><ref>R. Douglas Hurt, ''Agriculture and the Confederacy: Policy, Productivity, and Power in the Civil War South'' (2015)</ref>

{{multiple image
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|image1=NewOrleans1841AcrossRiver.jpg
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|caption1=New Orleans, the South's largest port city and the only pre-war population over 100,000. The port and region's agriculture were lost to the Union in April 1862.
|image2=TredagarIronWorksRichmond.jpg
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|caption2=Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond VA. South's largest factory. Ended locomotive production in 1860 to make arms and munitions.
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The plantations that enslaved over three million black people were the principal source of wealth. Most were concentrated in "[[Black Belt (geological formation)|black belt]]" plantation areas (because few white families in the poor regions owned slaves). For decades, there had been widespread fear of slave revolts. During the war, extra men were assigned to "home guard" patrol duty and governors sought to keep militia units at home for protection. Historian William Barney reports, "no major slave revolts erupted during the Civil War." Nevertheless, slaves took the opportunity to enlarge their sphere of independence, and when union forces were nearby, many ran off to join them.<ref>{{cite book|author=William L. Barney|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R6BpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA291|year=2011|publisher=Oxford Up|page=291|isbn=978-0199878147}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Leslie Alexander|title=Encyclopedia of African American History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uivtCqOlpTsC&pg=PA351|year=2010|publisher=ABC-CLIO|page=351|isbn=978-1851097746}}</ref>

Slave labor was applied in industry in a limited way in the Upper South and in a few port cities. One reason for the regional lag in industrial development was top-heavy income distribution. Mass production requires mass markets, and [[Economics of slavery|slaves]] living in small cabins, using self-made tools and outfitted with one suit of work clothes each year of inferior fabric, did not generate consumer demand to sustain local manufactures of any description in the same way as did a mechanized family farm of [[free labor]] in the North. The Southern economy was "pre-capitalist" in that slaves were put to work in the largest revenue-producing enterprises, not free labor markets. That labor system as practiced in the American South encompassed paternalism, whether abusive or indulgent, and that meant labor management considerations apart from productivity.<ref>"Thomas1979" pp. 12–15</ref>

Approximately 85% of both the North and South white populations lived on family farms, both regions were predominantly agricultural, and mid-century industry in both was mostly domestic. But the Southern economy was pre-capitalist in its overwhelming reliance on the agriculture of cash crops to produce wealth, while the great majority of farmers fed themselves and supplied a small local market. Southern cities and industries grew faster than ever before, but the thrust of the rest of the country's exponential growth elsewhere was toward urban industrial development along transportation systems of canals and railroads. The South was following the dominant currents of the American economic mainstream, but at a "great distance" as it lagged in the all-weather modes of transportation that brought cheaper, speedier freight shipment and forged new, expanding inter-regional markets.<ref>Thomas ''The Confederate Nation'' pp. 15–16</ref>

A third count of the pre-capitalist Southern economy relates to the cultural setting. White southerners did not adopt a [[work ethic]], nor the habits of thrift that marked the rest of the country. It had access to the tools of capitalism, but it did not adopt its culture. The Southern Cause as a national economy in the Confederacy was grounded in "slavery and race, planters and patricians, plain folk and folk culture, cotton and plantations".<ref>"Thomas1979" p. 16</ref>

====National production====
[[File:Advantages.jpg|thumb|right|238x238px|The Union had large advantages in men and resources at the start of the war; the ratio grew steadily in favor of the Union]]

The Confederacy started its existence as an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cotton, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco and [[sugarcane]]. Local food production included grains, hogs, cattle, and gardens. The cash came from exports but the Southern people spontaneously stopped exports in early 1861 to hasten the impact of "[[King Cotton]]", a failed strategy to coerce international support for the Confederacy through its cotton exports. When the blockade was announced, commercial shipping practically ended (the ships could not get insurance), and only a trickle of supplies came via blockade runners. The cutoff of exports was an economic disaster for the South, rendering useless its most valuable properties, its plantations and their enslaved workers. Many planters kept growing cotton, which piled up everywhere, but most turned to food production. All across the region, the lack of repair and maintenance wasted away the physical assets.

The eleven states had produced $155 million (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US-GDP|value=155000000|start_year=1860}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}) in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local gristmills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and [[naval stores]] such as turpentine. The main industrial areas were border cities such as Baltimore, Wheeling, Louisville and St. Louis, that were never under Confederate control. The government did set up munitions factories in the Deep South. Combined with captured munitions and those coming via blockade runners, the armies were kept minimally supplied with weapons. The soldiers suffered from reduced rations, lack of medicines, and the growing shortages of uniforms, shoes and boots. Shortages were much worse for civilians, and the prices of necessities steadily rose.<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas Conn Bryan|title=Confederate Georgia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oeZr20kWbiAC&pg=PA106|year=2009|publisher=U. of Georgia Press|pages=105–109|isbn=978-0820334998}}</ref>

The Confederacy adopted a [[tariff]] or tax on imports of 15%, and imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the United States.<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/tariff/tariff.html Tariff of the Confederate States of America, May 21, 1861].</ref> The tariff mattered little; the Union blockade minimized commercial traffic through the Confederacy's ports, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the North. The Confederate government in its entire history collected only $3.5&nbsp;million in tariff revenue. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation. The Confederacy underwent an economic revolution by centralization and standardization, but it was too little too late as its economy was systematically strangled by blockade and raids.<ref>Ian Drury, ed. ''American Civil War: Naval & Economic Warfare'' (2003) p. 138. {{ISBN|0-00-716458-0}}. "The Confederacy underwent a government-led industrial revolution during the war, but its economy was slowly strangled."</ref>

===Transportation systems===
{{Main|Confederate railroads in the American Civil War}}
[[File:Railroad of Confederacy-1861.jpg|thumb|upright=1.78|Main railroads of Confederacy, 1861; colors show the different gauges (track width); the top railroad shown in the upper right is the Baltimore and Ohio, which was at all times a Union railroad]]
[[File:Hensie-fry-hanging-brownlow-1861.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Passers-by abused the bodies of Union supporters near [[Knoxville, Tennessee]]. The two were hanged by Confederate authorities near the railroad tracks so passing train passengers could see them.]]

In peacetime, the South's extensive and connected systems of navigable rivers and coastal access allowed for cheap and easy transportation of agricultural products. The railroad system in the South had developed as a supplement to the navigable rivers to enhance the all-weather shipment of cash crops to market. Railroads tied plantation areas to the nearest river or seaport and so made supply more dependable, lowered costs and increased profits. In the event of invasion, the vast geography of the Confederacy made logistics difficult for the Union. Wherever Union armies invaded, they assigned many of their soldiers to garrison captured areas and to protect rail lines.

At the onset of the Civil War the South had a rail network disjointed and plagued by changes in [[track gauge]] as well as lack of interchange. Locomotives and freight cars had fixed axles and could not use tracks of different gauges (widths). Railroads of different gauges leading to the same city required all freight to be off-loaded onto wagons for transport to the connecting railroad station, where it had to await freight cars and a [[locomotive#Motive power|locomotive]] before proceeding. Centers requiring off-loading included Vicksburg, New Orleans, Montgomery, Wilmington and Richmond.<ref name="Trains1">{{cite journal|last1= Hankey|first1= John P.|year= 2011|title= The Railroad War|journal= Trains|publisher= Kalmbach Publishing Company|volume= 71|issue= 3|pages= 24–35 }}</ref> In addition, most rail lines led from coastal or river ports to inland cities, with few lateral railroads. Because of this design limitation, the relatively primitive railroads of the Confederacy were unable to overcome the Union naval blockade of the South's crucial intra-coastal and river routes.

The Confederacy had no plan to expand, protect or encourage its railroads. Southerners' refusal to export the cotton crop in 1861 left railroads bereft of their main source of income.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 1836241|doi = 10.2307/1836241|title = The Confederate Government and the Railroads|url = https://archive.org/details/sim_american-historical-review_1917-07_22_4/page/794|journal = The American Historical Review|volume = 22|issue = 4|pages = 794–810|year = 1917|last1 = Ramsdell|first1 = Charles W.}}</ref> Many lines had to lay off employees; many critical skilled technicians and engineers were permanently lost to military service. In the early years of the war the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate a national policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort.<ref name="Ersatz">Mary Elizabeth Massey. ''Ersatz in the Confederacy'' (1952) p. 128.</ref> Railroads came under the ''de facto'' control of the military. In contrast, the U.S. Congress had authorized military administration of Union-controlled railroad and telegraph systems in January 1862, imposed a standard gauge, and built railroads into the South using that gauge. Confederate armies successfully reoccupying territory could not be resupplied directly by rail as they advanced. The C.S. Congress formally authorized military administration of railroads in February 1865.

In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. There was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and rolling stock wore out through heavy use.<ref>Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads", pp. 809–810.</ref>

====Horses and mules====
The Confederate army experienced a persistent shortage of horses and mules and requisitioned them with dubious promissory notes given to local farmers and breeders. Union forces paid in real money and found ready sellers in the South. Both armies needed horses for cavalry and for artillery.<ref>Spencer Jones, "The Influence of Horse Supply Upon Field Artillery in the American Civil War", ''Journal of Military History'', (April 2010), 74#2 pp. 357–377</ref> Mules pulled the wagons. The supply was undermined by an unprecedented epidemic of [[glanders]], a fatal disease that baffled veterinarians.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 3744026|title = The Great Glanders Epizootic, 1861–1866: A Civil War Legacy|url = https://archive.org/details/sim_agricultural-history_winter-1995_69_1/page/79|journal = Agricultural History|volume = 69|issue = 1|pages = 79–97|last1 = Sharrer|first1 = G. Terry|year = 1995|pmid = 11639801}}</ref> After 1863 the invading Union forces had a policy of shooting all the local horses and mules that they did not need, in order to keep them out of Confederate hands. The Confederate armies and farmers experienced a growing shortage of horses and mules, which hurt the Southern economy and the war effort. The South lost half of its 2.5&nbsp;million horses and mules; many farmers ended the war with none left. Army horses were used up by hard work, malnourishment, disease and battle wounds; they had a life expectancy of about seven months.<ref>
Keith Miller, "Southern Horse", ''Civil War Times'', (February 2006) 45#1 pp. 30–36 [https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=19359914&site=eds-live&scope=site online]
</ref>

===Financial instruments===
Both the individual Confederate states and later the Confederate government printed [[Confederate States of America dollar]]s as paper currency in various denominations, with a total face value of $1.5&nbsp;billion. Much of it was signed by Treasurer [[Edward C. Elmore]]. Inflation became rampant as the paper money depreciated and eventually became worthless. The state governments and some localities printed their own paper money, adding to the runaway inflation.<ref>{{cite book |first=William J. |last=Cooper |title=Jefferson Davis, American |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j05vwNRXi-0C&pg=PA378 |year=2010 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |page=378 |isbn=978-0307772640 }}</ref>

[[File:CSA-T25-$10-1862.jpg|thumb|The 1862 $10 [[Confederate States dollar|CSA note]] depicts a vignette of [[Hope]] flanked by [[Robert M. T. Hunter|R. M. T. Hunter]] and [[Christopher Memminger|C. G. Memminger]].]]

The Confederate government initially wanted to finance its war mostly through tariffs on imports, export taxes, and voluntary donations of gold. After the spontaneous imposition of an embargo on cotton sales to Europe in 1861, these sources of revenue dried up and the Confederacy increasingly turned to [[Government debt|issuing debt]] and printing money to pay for war expenses. The Confederate States politicians were worried about angering the general population with hard taxes. A tax increase might disillusion many Southerners, so the Confederacy resorted to printing more money. As a result, inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Richard |last1=Burdekin |first2=Farrokh |last2=Langdana |title=War Finance in the Southern Confederacy, 1861–1865 |journal=Explorations in Economic History |volume=30 |issue=3 |pages=352–376 |year=1993 |doi=10.1006/exeh.1993.1015 }}</ref> By April 1863, for example, the cost of flour in Richmond had risen to $100 (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US|value=100|start_year=1863}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US}}) a barrel and housewives were rioting.<ref>{{cite book |first=John D. |last=Wright |title=The Language of the Civil War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3aEJZRIxjDAC&pg=PA41 |year=2001 |page=41 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1573561358 }}</ref>

The Confederate government took over the three national mints in its territory: the [[Charlotte Mint]] in North Carolina, the [[Dahlonega Mint]] in Georgia, and the [[New Orleans Mint]] in Louisiana. During 1861 all of these facilities produced small amounts of gold coinage, and the latter half dollars as well. A lack of silver and gold precluded further coinage. The Confederacy apparently also experimented with issuing one cent coins, although only 12 were produced by a jeweler in Philadelphia, who was afraid to send them to the South. Like the half dollars, copies were later made as souvenirs.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcgs.com/news/confederate-coinage-a-short-lived-dream|title=Confederate Coinage: A Short-lived Dream|website=PCGS}}</ref>

US coinage was hoarded and did not have any general circulation. U.S. coinage was admitted as legal tender up to $10, as were British sovereigns, [[Napoléon (coin)|French Napoleons]] and Spanish and Mexican doubloons at a fixed rate of exchange. Confederate money was paper and postage stamps.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 127, 151–153</ref>

===Food shortages and riots===
{{Main|Southern bread riots}}
[[File:Apr2 richmond riot.jpg|thumb|upright|Richmond bread riot, 1863]]

By mid-1861, the Union naval blockade virtually shut down the export of cotton and the import of manufactured goods. Food that formerly came overland was cut off.

As women were the ones who remained at home, they had to make do with the lack of food and supplies. They cut back on purchases, used old materials, and planted more flax and peas to provide clothing and food. They used ersatz substitutes when possible. The households were severely hurt by inflation in the cost of everyday items like flour, and the shortages of food, fodder for the animals, and medical supplies for the wounded.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jessica Fordham |last=Kidd |title=Privation and Pride: Life in Blockaded Alabama |journal=Alabama Heritage Magazine |year=2006 |volume=82 |pages=8–15 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Mary Elizabeth |last=Massey |title=Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront |year=1952 |pages=71–73 }}</ref>

State governments requested that planters grow less cotton and more food, but most refused. When cotton prices soared in Europe, expectations were that Europe would soon intervene to break the blockade and make them rich, but Europe remained neutral.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Coulter|first=E. Merton|year=1927|title=The Movement for Agricultural Reorganization in the Cotton South during the Civil War|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_agricultural-history_1927-01_1_1/page/3|journal=Agricultural History|volume=1|issue=1|pages=3–17|jstor=3739261}}</ref> The Georgia legislature imposed cotton quotas, making it a crime to grow an excess. But food shortages only worsened, especially in the towns.<ref>{{cite book |first=C. Mildred |last=Thompson |title=Reconstruction In Georgia: Economic, Social, Political 1865–1872 |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructionin00thomuoft |year=1915 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reconstructionin00thomuoft/page/14 14]–17, 22 |publisher=New York, Columbia University Press }}</ref>

The overall decline in food supplies, made worse by the inadequate transportation system, led to serious shortages and high prices in urban areas. When bacon reached a dollar a pound in 1863, the poor women of Richmond, Atlanta and many other cities began to riot; they broke into shops and warehouses to seize food. As wives and widows of soldiers, they were hurt by the inadequate welfare system.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Stephanie |last=McCurry |title=Bread or Blood! |journal=Civil War Times |year=2011 |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=36–41 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first1=Teresa Crisp |last1=Williams |first2=David |last2=Williams |title='The Women Rising': Cotton, Class, and Confederate Georgia's Rioting Women |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_georgia-historical-quarterly_spring-2002_86_1/page/49 |journal=Georgia Historical Quarterly |year=2002 |volume=86 |issue=1 |pages=49–83 |jstor=40584640 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Michael B. |last=Chesson |title=Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |volume=92 |issue=2 |year=1984 |pages=131–175 |jstor=4248710 }}</ref>

===Devastation by 1865===
By the end of the war deterioration of the Southern infrastructure was widespread. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Every Confederate state was affected, but most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, while Texas and Florida saw the least military action. Much of the damage was caused by direct military action, but most was caused by lack of repairs and upkeep, and by deliberately using up resources. Historians have recently estimated how much of the devastation was caused by military action. Paul Paskoff calculates that Union military operations were conducted in 56% of 645 counties in nine Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida). These counties contained 63% of the 1860 white population and 64% of the slaves. By the time the fighting took place, undoubtedly some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Paul F. |last=Paskoff |title=Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy |journal=Civil War History |year=2008 |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=35–62 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2008.0007 |s2cid=144929048 }}</ref>

<gallery style="float:right; text-align:center" perrow="2">
PottersHouseAtlanta1864.jpg|Potters House, Atlanta GA
Charleston ruins.jpg|Downtown Charleston SC
Virginia, Norfolk Navy Yard, Ruins of - NARA - 533292.tif|Navy Yard, Norfolk VA
Ruins of Petersburg, R.R. Bridge, Richmond, Va. April, 1865 - NARA - 528974.jpg|Rail bridge, Petersburg VA
</gallery>

The eleven Confederate States in the 1860 United States census 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 percent of the urban South. Historians have not estimated what their actual population was when Union forces arrived. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1 percent of the Confederacy's 1860 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&nbsp;million; by 1870, it had diminished by 40 percent and was worth just $48&nbsp;million. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available, and even repairs were difficult.<ref name="Paskoff, Measures of War">Paskoff, "Measures of War"</ref>

The economic losses affected everyone. Most banks and insurance companies had gone bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. The billions of dollars invested in slaves vanished. Most debts were also left behind. Most farms were intact but had lost their horses, mules, and cattle. Paskoff shows the loss of farm infrastructure was about the same whether or not fighting took place nearby. The loss of infrastructure and productive capacity meant that rural widows throughout the region faced not only the absence of able-bodied men, but a depleted stock of material resources. During four years of warfare, disruption, and blockades, the South used up about half its capital stock.<ref name="Paskoff, Measures of War"/>

The rebuilding took years and was hindered by the low price of cotton after the war. Outside investment was essential, especially in railroads. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:<ref>{{cite book |first=John Samuel |last=Ezell |title=The South since 1865 |url=https://archive.org/details/southsince18650000ezel |year=1963 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/southsince18650000ezel/page/27 27]–28 |publisher=New York, Macmillan }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|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.}}

===Effect on women and families===
[[File:Confederate monument in Natchez, MS, Cemetery IMG 6995.JPG|thumb|right|upright=0.9|This Confederate memorial [[tombstone]] at Natchez City Cemetery is in [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]], [[Mississippi]].]]

More than 250,000 Confederate soldiers died during the war. Some widows abandoned their family farms and merged into the households of relatives, or even became refugees living in camps with high rates of disease and death.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Lisa Tendrich |editor-last=Frank |title=Women in the American Civil War |year=2008 }}</ref> In the Old South, being an "[[Spinster|old maid]]" was an embarrassment to the woman and her family, but after the war, it became almost a norm.<ref>{{cite book |first=Drew Gilpin |last=Faust |title=Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War |year=1996 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/mothersofinventi00faus/page/139 139–152] |isbn=0-8078-2255-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/mothersofinventi00faus/page/139 |publisher=Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press }}</ref> Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Divorce, while never fully accepted, became more common. The concept of the "New Woman" emerged – she was self-sufficient and independent, and stood in sharp contrast to the "Southern Belle" of antebellum lore.<ref>{{cite book |first=Anya |last=Jabour |title=Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South |url=https://archive.org/details/scarlettssisters0000jabo |publisher=U of North Carolina Press |year=2007 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/scarlettssisters0000jabo/page/273 273]–280 |isbn=978-0-8078-3101-4 }}</ref>