“...on the one hand, the Union did enjoy overwhelming advantages in materiel, troops and industry, as well as the ability to project power via its Navy; on the other hand, the Confederacy’s objective was merely to not lose, whereas the Union not only had to win, but annihilate the enemy. Lincoln’s great failing was not waging the war this way to begin with, clinging to the hope that with a few Northern wins the rebels would break and negotiate. That option ceased to exist after Fort Sumter.
Instead, it took nearly two years for the Union to ramp up her war machine; she did not institute a national draft, rather leaving the task to state militias of variable reliability; and continuing to task the offenses in the crucial Eastern Theater, where Richmond could be threatened, to inept or timid generals who’s names would become synonymous with failure - McClellan, Burnside, Pope.
Unlike their cousins in the CSA, however, Union generals after the Treaty of Havana would spend years studying how and why they lost, how the logistical advantage was so squandered against an enemy repeatedly caught flat footed. General George Custer’s seminal essays on the war depicted Robert E. Lee as a providentially lucky man and Braxton Bragg as blessed by patience rather than talent; comparatively, south of the Ohio River these men were celebrated as flawless titans, the greatest strategists since Napoleon...”
- The War of Southern Independence at 100 (West Point Academy Press, 1963)