What was the percentage of railroads in the South during the Civil War?
Of this, 21,300 miles (along with 45,000 miles of telegraph wire), or about 70%, was concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest while the Confederacy enjoyed only 9,022 miles (and 5,000 miles of telegraph wire).
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The industrialized Union possessed an enormous advantage over the Confederacy — they had 20,000 miles of railroad track, more than double the Confederacy's 9,000 miles.
Most railroads before 1860 were in the east. Most of the land that the Central Pacific crossed was flat. When barbed wire was introduced into the West, cattle were no longer able to cross open prairie. Nearly half of the United States was farmed by 1900.
Before the Civil War the South was one of the richest regions in the world, standing just behind Britain and the Northern states. More than half of the richest one percent of Americans were Southerners.