10 Crucial Errors That Decided The Civil War

The South Didn’t Sell Their Cotton Stockpile 

King Cotton was the main cash crop and economic interest of the Confederacy, and a valuable part of their fledgling connections to Europe. Instead of selling the cotton stockpile at the outset of the war, which would’ve generated money for weapons and the like, the South sat on their stockpile of cotton.

The North was able to establish a blockade as part of the Anaconda Plan, and the South lost billions in revenue from potential cotton sales. Most of this surplus cotton ended up destroyed or sold to Northern speculators, depriving the South of its most crucial source of money and material.