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Civil War History 48.3 (2002) 264-265



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Book Review

Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War


Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War. By David G. Surdam. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xiv, 286. Cloth, $34.95.)

The literature on the American Civil War continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Scholars continue to address and revisit topics as diverse as the Battle of Gettysburg and the role of women. David G. Surdam's monograph marks yet another contribution to the study of the economics of the war. Focusing on the Union Navy's blockade of Confederate ports and its impact on Confederate defeat, Surdam challenges, in some cases revises, other studies.

Surdam asserts that the Southern nation had three assets at the onset of the war: cotton, cattle, and corn. He asks, none too rhetorically, why these assets were not put to better use. Further, he questions whether other studies of the blockade and its affect on Southern military fortunes concentrate on the "wrong questions" (1-5). For Surdam, "The focus upon imports has been myopic and also misses what may have been two of the blockade's most important achievements: disrupting interregional trade and denying the Confederacy badly needed revenue from exporting cotton and other staple products" (6).

Surdam's book begins with a broad survey of the South's antebellum economy. It is a wide brush that concludes the Southern lag in manufacturing would have made "supplying the needs of its armies . . . a daunting task" (33). Though the Confederate manufacturing abilities may have been limited, Surdam finds that agriculturally, the Confederacy probably was able to feed and supply its armies if the logistical infrastructure held.

Part 2 of the book shifts to an analysis of the Union blockade on the Confederate war effort. Analyzing such diverse topics as the effect of the naval cordon on the Mississippi Valley economy, the beef and pork trade, the railroads and military imports, Surdam concludes the lack of coastwise shipping and the "inadequacy of Southern railroads contributed to the Confederate defeat. Here, Surdam's most original argument revolves around the role of Union gunboats on the western waters and the blockade squadrons along the coast and the way they constricted, if not destroyed, any coastal trading the Confederacy may have attempted. Surdam also assesses how the lack of coastal trade and the ever-tightening blockade played on civilian morale. Here, he maintains the record is not nearly as clear.

The final section of Surdam's book examines the blockade and its impact on the South's cotton trade. In this part, he employs a counterfactual argument, forecasting possible revenues that may have accrued to the Confederacy as a result of price setting. Surdam maintains that money from the cotton trade could, indeed, have aided the Confederacy's prosecution of the war, but that neither the South nor the North garnered as much from the cotton trade as they might have.

Surdam's book is most definitely an economic history. His appendices detail the various methods and formulae he utilized, while the tables and charts within the [End Page 264] body of the work underscore points he makes in his text. While he states clearly and repeatedly how his study revises or challenges other interpretations, based on his culling of new archival sources, the conclusions do not, in most cases, bear that out. The blockade did hurt the South; the South's infrastructure was not up to the demands of an increasingly modern, total war; and while supplies and manufactured goods were available to the armies, too often they were too far removed to benefit either soldiers or civilians.

Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War is an interesting study that will appeal to students of the naval war and the economics of the conflict. It is not for the general reader, however well versed he or she may be in both naval history and economic history. The author assumes a...

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