When he proposed that the US fought the Civil War with one hand behind its back.
Shelby Foote on Union Victory - Bing video
I think he meant that the US had the ability to bring overwhelming industrial power to the war at any time it chose.
That might was likely to be seen in naval power, and as actually happened, in more and more accurate artillery. Because the US had the ability to move the tonnage of food and fodder it could create and deploy much larger cavalry units than the Confederates could maintain.
HIs metaphor is illustrative, but the other hand was not behind any figurative US back. By the end of the decade the US had experienced growth and fantastic industrial growth.
In other comments the late Mr. Foote seems to explain the romantic ardor of the Confederate soldiers. But he may have also judged it to be terribly naive. Men in the south had little chance to see what industrial warfare would be like. The changes wrought by science and engineering between Napoleon and the Crimean War were known to only a few and even those few men could not explain how much things had changed in 40 years.
Shelby Foote on Union Victory - Bing video
I think he meant that the US had the ability to bring overwhelming industrial power to the war at any time it chose.
That might was likely to be seen in naval power, and as actually happened, in more and more accurate artillery. Because the US had the ability to move the tonnage of food and fodder it could create and deploy much larger cavalry units than the Confederates could maintain.
HIs metaphor is illustrative, but the other hand was not behind any figurative US back. By the end of the decade the US had experienced growth and fantastic industrial growth.
In other comments the late Mr. Foote seems to explain the romantic ardor of the Confederate soldiers. But he may have also judged it to be terribly naive. Men in the south had little chance to see what industrial warfare would be like. The changes wrought by science and engineering between Napoleon and the Crimean War were known to only a few and even those few men could not explain how much things had changed in 40 years.