On Northern preparations for the Civil War

[whitworth]

A common characteristic of all the U.S. early wars. Spend virtually nothing in peacetime, and crank up production during a war. No industrialist, worth the name, would do such a thing.
Even in World War II, unpreparedness caused President Roosevelt to intern the Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the west coast. Today we read it was a civil rights violation. The truth then was the U.S. did not have an adequate army to protect the west coast and also look after any possible espionage from those of Japanese ancestory. Much was lost, er forgotten, with victory in 1945.

I have a particular advantage over most students of World War II history, as I am older and had two uncles in the National Guard in the late thirties, prior to World War II.

Unpreparedness for war was a common ailment of the United States. Don't ever think otherwise.

[trice]

Originally Posted by whitworth

A common characteristic of all the U.S. early wars. Spend virtually nothing in peacetime, and crank up production during a war. No industrialist, worth the name, would do such a thing.
Even in World War II, unpreparedness caused President Roosevelt to intern the Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the west coast. Today we read it was a civil rights violation. The truth then was the U.S. did not have an adequate army to protect the west coast and also look after any possible espionage from those of Japanese ancestory. Much was lost, er forgotten, with victory in 1945.

I have a particular advantage over most students of World War II history, as I am older and had two uncles in the National Guard in the late thirties, prior to World War II.

Unpreparedness for war was a common ailment of the United States. Don't ever think otherwise.

Certainly, an American trait that repeated again and again: look at the situation in 1950 when Korea erupted.

The lowpoint for US military preparedness between the world wars is actually 1932. By the end of Hoover's term, the US Army was 135,000 men; the Navy was cut to the bone (Hoover becoming the 2nd US President in history not to have a single warship keel laid during his administration), many authorized ships were mothballed to save money, and the USS Lexington had spent a month tied up to a dock supplying electrical power to Tacoma Washington in 1929-30. While FDR may not have done enough, when Pearl Harbor was attacked the same Army was over 1,000,000 strong and the Navy was much, much stronger. That's a big diversion from the Civil War, however.

The point of the "Northern preparedness" in 1860-61 is that there was none, while the Confederacy was preparing as fast as they knew how.

Regards,
Tim