the Confederacy consisted were primarily agrarian. In comparison with the North, the South, according to McPherson, lacked the "industrial base to manufacture gunpowder, cannon, and rifles" (319). The South did have a major iron works near Richmond and other arsenals, but it was uncomfortably dependent, according to Catton, on its seaborne trade with Europe to obtain arms and to sell its cotton to pay for them which the Union blockade over time severely impaired (22). And the superiority of the Union Navy on the South's rivers and other inland waterways when combined with Grant's amphibious tactics in capturing Forts Donelson and Henry early in the war and Vicksburg on the Mississippi in 1863 eventually cut the Confederacy in two and robbed its eastern population of access to much of the agricultural produce of the Southwest.
The development of extensive rail networks in Europe revolutionized Prussia's strategic position. As a relatively small and less populous power Prussia always was concerned with the need to defend
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