The real starting point for the two potential belligerents:

[Union8448]

File this under other politics. I suspect the real starting point for measuring the war potential of the northern region against the 11 states that eventually joined the Confederacy was 1856, the last year before the 1857 financial panic in the paid labor states.
The St. Louis Fed Res produced a time series on how much railroad building slowed in the mid decade of the 1850s.
Miles of Railroad Built for United States (A02F2AUSA374NNBR) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)
At the time, I think most people in the northern states knew ship building was slowing down in the 1850s as the Gold Rush cooled off and Aspinall's Panama railroad took a good deal of revenue from the steamers cruising around the horn of South America. More ships were not needed and British ship building was picking up.
The Preliminary Report of the 1860 census recorded the numbers with respect to ship building for the decade. I think Lincoln and Sec'y of the Navy Wells knew the US had plenty of ships and that losses to the Confederacy were of the same order of magnitude as losses to storms and decay.
The paid labor economy of the US was involved in a dynamic process of industrialization fueled in part by foreign immigration and British investment. The US was a net debtor nation for most of the 19th century.
Commissioner Walker's 1870 census more closely reflected the breadth and scale of US industry especially with the numerous applications of steam power to manufacturing and transportation.
If this view is correct it goes a long way to explain why the US Civil War ended in total victory for the federal forces. The best metaphor for the US military/industrial complex was a train gathering speed on a descending grade. It may also explain why the ordinary man in the deep south had no idea what he was going to be fighting against. That would contrast to the cities and counties bordering the paid labor regions, as the people there had much more opportunity to visit the northern cities and see the goods available from northern merchants.
Table 15 reflects the ability of the mechanical revolution in the northern areas:

Preliminary report on the Eighth Census, 1860
It seems to me that a nation capable of mechanizing the process of stitching together garments and making seams and button holes, might also be able to produce some new and effective weapons of war.

 

[5fish]

I think @jgoodguy would like the data you posted about sewing...

At the time, I think most people in the northern states knew ship building was slowing down in the 1850s as the Gold Rush cooled off and Aspinall's Panama railroad took a good deal of revenue from the steamers cruising around the horn of South America. More ships were not needed and British ship building was picking up.

The railroad has a good story behind it but it missed the gold rush but still became the most profitable railroad in the world back then. It was saved by a hurricane...

Panama Canal Railway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In January 1849, Aspinwall hired Colonel George W. Hughes to lead a survey party and pick a proposed Panama Railroad roadbed to Panama City. The eventual survey turned out to be full of errors, omissions, and optimistic forecasts, which made it of little use. In April 1849, William Henry Aspinwall was chosen as head of the Panama Railroad Company, which was incorporated in the State of New York and initially raised $1,000,000 in capital.

On a rainy midnight on January 27, 1855, lit by sputtering whale oil lamps, the last rail was set in place on pine crossties. Chief engineer George Totten, in pouring rain with a nine-pound maul, drove the spike that completed the railroad. The next day the first locomotive with freight and passenger cars passed from sea to sea. The huge project was completed.[18]

 

[5fish]

Commissioner Walker's 1870 census

General Francis Walker... He was an economist...

Superintendent of the Census Francis Amasa Walker

Walker was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1840.

www.census.gov

Britannica Money

www.britannica.com

The residual-claimant theory of wages, originated by the American economist Francis A. Walker, held that wages were the remainder of total industrial revenue after rent, interest, and profit (which were independently determined) were deducted.

What Walker is saying the worker is the last to get paid after everyone else in the means of production are paid...

Residual claimant - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The residual claimant refers to the economic agent who has the sole remaining claim on an organization's net cash flows, i.e. after the deduction of precedent agents' claims, and therefore also bears the residual risk.[1] Residual risk is defined in this context as the risk associated with differences between the stochastic inflows of assets into the organization and precedent agents' claims on the organization's cash flows. Precedent agents' claims on an organization's cash flows can consist of e.g. employees' salaries, creditors' interest or the government's taxes.

The concept of the residual claimant has been the subject of as well as used in over 8,000 scholarly articles, notably in law and economics, information economics and corporate finance.[2] Its use can be traced back to the late 19th century and Francis Amasa Walker's 'residual claimant theory',[3] which argues that in the distribution of wealth among profits, rent, interest and wages, the laborer is the residual claimant and wages the variable residual share of wealth, thereby going against the established view of profits as the residual share and igniting a debate with Simon Patten, Jacob Hollander and James Bonar.[4]

Residual claimancy is generally required in order for there to be a moral hazard, which is a problem typical of information asymmetry. This is specifically the case for the principal–agent problem.[5][6]

 

[jgoodguy]

File this under other politics. I suspect the real starting point for measuring the war potential of the northern region against the 11 states that eventually joined the Confederacy was 1856, the last year before the 1857 financial panic in the paid labor states.
The St. Louis Fed Res produced a time series on how much railroad building slowed in the mid decade of the 1850s.
Miles of Railroad Built for United States (A02F2AUSA374NNBR) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)
At the time, I think most people in the northern states knew ship building was slowing down in the 1850s as the Gold Rush cooled off and Aspinall's Panama railroad took a good deal of revenue from the steamers cruising around the horn of South America. More ships were not needed and British ship building was picking up.
The Preliminary Report of the 1860 census recorded the numbers with respect to ship building for the decade. I think Lincoln and Sec'y of the Navy Wells knew the US had plenty of ships and that losses to the Confederacy were of the same order of magnitude as losses to storms and decay.
The paid labor economy of the US was involved in a dynamic process of industrialization fueled in part by foreign immigration and British investment. The US was a net debtor nation for most of the 19th century.
Commissioner Walker's 1870 census more closely reflected the breadth and scale of US industry especially with the numerous applications of steam power to manufacturing and transportation.
If this view is correct it goes a long way to explain why the US Civil War ended in total victory for the federal forces. The best metaphor for the US military/industrial complex was a train gathering speed on a descending grade. It may also explain why the ordinary man in the deep south had no idea what he was going to be fighting against. That would contrast to the cities and counties bordering the paid labor regions, as the people there had much more opportunity to visit the northern cities and see the goods available from northern merchants.
Table 15 reflects the ability of the mechanical revolution in the northern areas:
View attachment 14731
Preliminary report on the Eighth Census, 1860
It seems to me that a nation capable of mechanizing the process of stitching together garments and making seams and button holes, might also be able to produce some new and effective weapons of war.

Germany, Italy, the UK and others were also big in the sewing machine biz. War became more deadly after the invention of sewing machines. Hard to fight a war with naked soldiers.

 

[jgoodguy]

I think @jgoodguy would like the data you posted about sewing...


The railroad has a good story behind it but it missed the gold rush but still became the most profitable railroad in the world back then. It was saved by a hurricane...

Panama Canal Railway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In January 1849, Aspinwall hired Colonel George W. Hughes to lead a survey party and pick a proposed Panama Railroad roadbed to Panama City. The eventual survey turned out to be full of errors, omissions, and optimistic forecasts, which made it of little use. In April 1849, William Henry Aspinwall was chosen as head of the Panama Railroad Company, which was incorporated in the State of New York and initially raised $1,000,000 in capital.

On a rainy midnight on January 27, 1855, lit by sputtering whale oil lamps, the last rail was set in place on pine crossties. Chief engineer George Totten, in pouring rain with a nine-pound maul, drove the spike that completed the railroad. The next day the first locomotive with freight and passenger cars passed from sea to sea. The huge project was completed.[18]

 

[Union8448]

I think @jgoodguy would like the data you posted about sewing...


The railroad has a good story behind it but it missed the gold rush but still became the most profitable railroad in the world back then. It was saved by a hurricane...

Panama Canal Railway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In January 1849, Aspinwall hired Colonel George W. Hughes to lead a survey party and pick a proposed Panama Railroad roadbed to Panama City. The eventual survey turned out to be full of errors, omissions, and optimistic forecasts, which made it of little use. In April 1849, William Henry Aspinwall was chosen as head of the Panama Railroad Company, which was incorporated in the State of New York and initially raised $1,000,000 in capital.

On a rainy midnight on January 27, 1855, lit by sputtering whale oil lamps, the last rail was set in place on pine crossties. Chief engineer George Totten, in pouring rain with a nine-pound maul, drove the spike that completed the railroad. The next day the first locomotive with freight and passenger cars passed from sea to sea. The huge project was completed.[18]

It was a deadly undertaking for the men working on the project.

 

[Union8448]

General Francis Walker... He was an economist...

Superintendent of the Census Francis Amasa Walker

Walker was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1840.

www.census.gov

Britannica Money

www.britannica.com

The residual-claimant theory of wages, originated by the American economist Francis A. Walker, held that wages were the remainder of total industrial revenue after rent, interest, and profit (which were independently determined) were deducted.

What Walker is saying the worker is the last to get paid after everyone else in the means of production are paid...

Residual claimant - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The residual claimant refers to the economic agent who has the sole remaining claim on an organization's net cash flows, i.e. after the deduction of precedent agents' claims, and therefore also bears the residual risk.[1] Residual risk is defined in this context as the risk associated with differences between the stochastic inflows of assets into the organization and precedent agents' claims on the organization's cash flows. Precedent agents' claims on an organization's cash flows can consist of e.g. employees' salaries, creditors' interest or the government's taxes.

The concept of the residual claimant has been the subject of as well as used in over 8,000 scholarly articles, notably in law and economics, information economics and corporate finance.[2] Its use can be traced back to the late 19th century and Francis Amasa Walker's 'residual claimant theory',[3] which argues that in the distribution of wealth among profits, rent, interest and wages, the laborer is the residual claimant and wages the variable residual share of wealth, thereby going against the established view of profits as the residual share and igniting a debate with Simon Patten, Jacob Hollander and James Bonar.[4]

Residual claimancy is generally required in order for there to be a moral hazard, which is a problem typical of information asymmetry. This is specifically the case for the principal–agent problem.[5][6]

Except without vendors and workers, there is no production and nothing to sell. Vertical integration gets rid of some of the vendors, and mechanization gets rid of some workers.

 

[Union8448]

Germany, Italy, the UK and others were also big in the sewing machine biz. War became more deadly after the invention of sewing machines. Hard to fight a war with naked soldiers.

Its a good indicator of the pace of mechanization. Within 20 years the US was a major industrial power. Locomotives and farm equipment were exportable.
There was already a lamp gas industry. Kerosene was about to replace whale oil.
Between 1850 and 1870 the US grew very rapidly. People who had been to Pittsburg, Cincinnati or St. Louis had a much better understanding of what the paid labor economy was producing.

 

[Union8448]

Germany, Italy, the UK and others were also big in the sewing machine biz. War became more deadly after the invention of sewing machines. Hard to fight a war with naked soldiers.

Actually some of Schofield's guys did cross a stream in Georgia naked, and fought that way for awhile. However I don't know if anyone ever died from a sewing machine injury.

 

[Union8448]

I think there's a reason people in Kentucky and Missouri and so many people from Virginia had reservations about the future of slavery and the wisdom of secession.

 

[jgoodguy]

Actually some of Schofield's guys did cross a stream in Georgia naked, and fought that way for awhile. However I don't know if anyone ever died from a sewing machine injury.

Lots of non lethal stuff is needed is needed before a spear pokes an enemy. The Confederacy had a clothing problem because all it had was hand stitching. The Union had industrial size sewing factories.

 

[jgoodguy]

I think there's a reason people in Kentucky and Missouri and so many people from Virginia had reservations about the future of slavery and the wisdom of secession.

One impetus for the Civil War was the fear that the border States would ban slavery and then the next set of States in would become border States that would then ban it.

 

[Union8448]

One impetus for the Civil War was the fear that the border States would ban slavery and then the next set of States in would become border States that would then ban it.

Wasn't the fear that slavery would be so shaky next to the paid labor states that people in the middle states would sell all their enslaved people to Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas?

 

[Union8448]

Lots of non lethal stuff is needed is needed before a spear pokes an enemy. The Confederacy had a clothing problem because all it had was hand stitching. The Union had industrial size sewing factories.

Good machines to have for making shoes and boots. Mark R. Wison noted in his book, The Business of Civil War that the sewing women in the paid labor states filled the army warehouses with clothing lasted for years, if the warehouse didn't burn down.

 

[Union8448]

A nation cannot delay the future with a war. In the US Civil War the exact opposite happened. There was so much mass production and railroad management packed into 4 years of war that the future, including the abolition of slavery, arrived sooner. I think that's what makes all those bloody land battles so tragic.

 

[Union8448]

The US Civil War opens with the US struggling to put a rifle capable of using Minie balls into the hands of every soldier. It ends with most of the US cavalry having a breach loading carbine and the first large scale deployment of repeating rifles using fully enclosed metal cartridges. The mechanical revolution mattered.

 

[5fish]

Except without vendors and workers, there is no production and nothing to sell. Vertical integration gets rid of some of the vendors, and mechanization gets rid of some workers.

Maybe you are talking about this census...

What is the connection between the U.S. Census Bureau and IBM? - History - U.S. Census Bureau

What is the Connection between the U.S. Census Bureau and IBM?

www.census.gov

.

Herman Hollerith worked for the Census Bureau during the 1880 census and then for the 1890 census, invented the electronic tabulators and punchcards that the Census Bureau used from 1890 until the 1950s.

The Hollerith Machine - History - U.S. Census Bureau

First used following the 1890 census, the Hollerith Machine was the first to electronically tabulate census returns.

www.census.gov

Following the 1880 census, the Census Bureau was collecting more data than it could tabulate. As a result, the agency held a competition in 1888 to find a more efficient method to process and tabulate data. Contestants were asked to process 1880 census data from four areas in St Louis, MO. Whoever captured and processed the data fastest would win a contract for the 1890 census.

Three contestants accepted the Census Bureau's challenge. The first two contestants captured the data in 144.5 hours and 100.5 hours. The third contestant, a former Census Bureau employee named Herman Hollerith, completed the data capture process in 72.5 hours.

Next, the contestants had to prove that their designs could prepare data for tabulation (i.e., by age category, race, gender, etc.). Two contestants required 44.5 hours and 55.5 hours. Hollerith astounded Census Bureau officials by completing the task in just 5.5 hours!

Herman Hollerith's impressive results earned him the contract to process and tabulate 1890 census data. Modified versions of his technology would continue to be used at the Census Bureau until replaced by computers in the 1950s.

Learn more about Herman Hollerith and his inventions at our January 2016 Webpage commemorating his 1889 patent for electronic tabulation.

 

[5fish]

There was already a lamp gas industry. Kerosene was about to replace whale oil.

Here is a short article on the decline of Whale oil... and why the union never tried to protect their whaling fleet...

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/531_Joshua%20Orszag.pdf

The Union did not protect these Northern whaling vessels partially because of inadequate resources and other Naval priorities. Days after the outbreak of war, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a blockade on all Southern ports. The blockade required a daunting 2,500 miles of coast to be covered by the mere 40 Union naval ships operating at the time.18 Given the limited number of vessels available, virtually the entire Union Navy had to concentrate on the blockade for it to succeed. The Union was so desperate to blockade the Southern coast effectively that it was even willing to sink old whaling ships to block entries to Southern harbors (a hint about how unconcerned the Union was about losing whaling ships)

Finally, the Union did not pursue the Confederate cruisers because the whale oil industry was already becoming less important for the economy. Even before the war started, the dominance of whale oil began to wane. The massive genocide of whales during the 19th century (an estimated 8,000 whales in 1853 alone) led to a significant depletion of the whale 22 population, which also explains why Northern whalers had to travel as far as Alaska during their expeditions (the supply elsewhere was already depleted). Standard laws of supply and demand 23 suggest that as supply goes down, price goes up. Indeed, as the whale population declined, the price of whale oil surged: in 1843, whale oil was $0.63 per 1/2 gallon; in 1854, the price had risen to $1.92 per 1/2 gallon. The rise in price, in turn, invited experimentation with other 24 sources of oil.

 

[5fish]

. People who had been to Pittsburg, Cincinnati or St. Louis had a much better understanding of what the paid labor economy was producing.

There was better economics to choose from than pure capitalism... besides Socialism and Communism, there was another alternative to the capitalism we live with today, Georgism... You know when your logo is a cat it has to be right... and later Distributism...

Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g., intellectual property).

Georgism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

.

more...

The Economic Solution Distributism to Neoliberalism...

You know this G. K. Chesterton keeps on giving for thoughts. He and a bunch of other Catholic writers came up with a new economic model called Distributism. It was considered a conservative economic model but it was never flushed out and has elements of liberal and conservative ideals mixed with...

www.jggscivilwartalk.online

 

[5fish]

Wasn't the fear that slavery would be so shaky next to the paid labor states that people in the middle states would sell all their enslaved people to Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas?

No, the shift was to sell off excess to the Cotton States and rent out to other work practices... not to mention slave breeding farms...

The Economy of the Enslaved in Virginia - Encyclopedia Virginia

The “Slaves’ Economy” In 1847, Adam Foster, a northerner visiting , . He observed that there was “a garden to each dwelling” and that enslaved households kept poultry and “provide themselves with fish from the river, and such as would sell in Boston at three cents each.” Foster recounted...

encyclopediavirginia.org

Between 1800 and 1865 the economy of Virginia changed and the system of enslavement and the economy of the enslaved shifted as well. Virginia’s agricultural economy began to decline by the early decades of the nineteenth century. Tobacco had given way to wheat in the late eighteenth century, but lower wheat prices, exhausted soil, and a severe economic recession beginning in 1819 shifted the centers of commerce from plantations to growing cities and towns. Enslavers reallocated hands from waning agricultural work to the tobacco and iron industries taking root in Richmond and other population centers. The increased hiring out of enslaved people—especially in the 1840s and 1850s—gave those individuals greater opportunities to make cash on the side through overwork and access to larger markets for goods and services. Greater opportunity for overwork in industrial settings ultimately did not result in the enhanced ability of enslaved people to save and build wealth. On the eve of the Civil War, enslaved people remained desperately poor, and their labor profited the growing class of Virginia industrialists.

A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry in the United States

Well there was a slave breeding industry in America like there are cattle breeding ranches/farms in todays America. I more one looks into slavery the more amazed how the south did turn humans into a commodity. Link...

www.jggscivilwartalk.online

The Slave Trail of Tears...

There is a slave trial from the tobacco south to the cotton south, some called it the second middle passages... It was the transfer of slaves from the upper south to the deep south. WE mention before about the slave farms in Virginia. Where they prepared slaves for the trip to the deep south...

www.jggscivilwartalk.online