by means of 1860 the South ranked excessive one of the built international locations of the area in according to capita source of revenue and lifestyles expectancy and within the variety of railroad miles, telegraph traces, and associations of upper studying. basically the key eu powers and the North had extra cotton and woolen spindles. This publication examines the accomplice military's application to manipulate this filthy rich commercial base by way of a quartermaster method. through commandeering greater than part the South's produced items for the army, the quartermaster basic, in a waft towards socialism, appropriated countless numbers of generators and regulated the circulate of southern manufacturing unit commodities. the main debatable of the quartermasters common was once Colonel Abraham Charles Myers. His iron hand set the controls of southern production through the struggle. His able successor, Brigadier normal Alexander R. Lawton, carried out the 1st census of accomplice assets, confirmed the plan of creation and distribution, and arranged the Bureau of international provides in a method for uploading elements, equipment, items, and army uniforms. whereas the Confederacy mobilized its turbines for army reasons, the Union systematically deliberate their destruction. The Union blockade ended the effectiveness of uploading items, and lower than the Union army's common Order a hundred accomplice used to be overwhelmed. the good antebellum production growth used to be over. shortage and impoverishment within the postbellum South introduced brands to the vanguard of southern political and ideological management. Allied for the reason for southern improvement have been former accomplice generals, newspaper editors, educators, and President Andrew Johnson himself, an investor in a southern cotton mill. in contrast postwar mania to rebuild, this publication assessments outdated assumptions approximately southern business re-emergence. It discloses, even sooner than the beginnings of Radical Reconstruction, that plans for a brand new South with an city, industrialized society have been demonstrated at the outdated foundations and on an ideology saying that basically technological know-how, know-how, and engineering may fix the zone. inside this philosophical mildew, Henry Grady, one of many New South's nice reformers, led the best way for southern production. through the start of the 1st international struggle part the nation's spindles lay in the former Confed-eracy, domestic of a brand new increase in production and the land of America's staple crop, cotton.