Why is the war more difficult for the north?

Answer 1

Because of following factors:

1 - The geographical features of the Confederacy. The territory of the seceded

States formed a rough quadrilateral of about a million square's mile. No through roads penetrated this enormous area. Inside the large part of it, roads were of local significance only and didn't connect with others existing in neighbouring states.

The Appalachians offered a valuable defensive barrier against offensive from Union territory in the Midwest and protected Northern Virginia and the Carolinas from an invasion. The region could only be 1invaded from the north, through Virginia or the south, via Alabama or by marching round through the bottom of the Appalachians.

This region, however was hard to be penetrated because the Ohio and its big tributaries, the Cumberland and the Tennessee formed a line which protected the central Upper South and the Mississippi with which they connected, left the Union but any chance of penetration.

2 -To win the war the Union had to destroy

the Confederate Armies or forcing them to surrender and conquer the whole, immense southern territory, because there were but few vital objectives to conquer, each of ones located, far away hundreds of miles one another.

That meant that an invading force had to sustain a great logistic effort in order to maintain its fighting efficiency, detaching along the way of its advance a considerable part of itsforces to garrison and defend their exposed lines of communication from the raids of the redoubtable Confederate cavalry.

3 - The " Home Front" of the Union was not compact as that of the Confederacy and Lincoln had to deal with political currents

undermining his administration and ready to negatively influence the public opinion by exploiting military failures, stalemates and the increasing amount of losses in battle.

This way of disagreement led sometimes to be considered like very close to a real treason and often produced among the people a feeling of weariness towards the war, which hindered its conduct

at least from the standpoint of the internal politics, for

the desire of a peace of compromise was more and more growing, starting about from the middle of 1864.