You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter" (Brinkley 414). President Abraham Lincoln spoke these words to a former slave that kneeled before him while walking the streets of the abandoned Confederate capitol of Richmond in 1865. Although there are several different questions of why the North won the Civil War, factors involving manpower, economy, military tactics and leadership, and presidential leadership, are all parts of a puzzle historians have tried to put together for years. I believe that these four factors should prove to be the most powerful reasons for the Union's destruction of the Confederate States of America. The presidential leadership of Lincoln will be revealed as the major influence over the other three factors.

             According to Robert Krick, an interviewee of Carl Zebrowski's article "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "the basic problem was numbers. Give Abraham Lincoln seven million men and give Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee twenty-one million, cognitive dissonance doesn't matter, European recognition doesn't matter, the Emancipation Proclamation and its ripple effect don't matter. Twenty-one to seven is a very different thing then seven to twenty-one" (Zebrowski 223). Despite the North's enormous population advantage over the South during the Civil War, other wars proved that size doesn't matter. For example, the Colonist's success in the American Revolution proved to Great Britain that America was an insignificant, but a successful opponent. "While Northern superiority in numbers and resources was a necessary condition for Union Victory, it is not a sufficient explanation for that victory," says James McPherson (Zebrowski 224). .

             When looking at economic factors in the Civil War, we find that the war had a devastating effect on the South and a converse effect on the North. Because of the Northern blockade and the disconnection of Southern farmers from markets in the North, sales of cotton became nearly impossible.