No, it overcame them with four times the population which could keep killing off it's young men at a rate far higher than the South could match.
Economics didn't win the war. Sheer numbers of able bodied men and a government willing to sacrifice them is what won the war.
“Economics didn’t win the war. Sheer numbers of able bodied men and a government willing to sacrifice them is what won the war.
January 1865 there were 800,000 men serving in the Union Army and 200,000 men serving in the United States Navy.
The Springfield Arsenal produce more 58 caliber rifle muskets than all arsenals in the South could produce. Springfield along with 21 contactors produced 2,000,000 weapons during the war. The South could only produce 500,000 rifles, and was still buying them in England in April 1865. Tredegar in Richmond cast half the artillery pieces produced in the South. There were five iron works in the North that equaled or exceeded Tredegar capacity. There were seven more that approached Tredegar capacity. Northern Shipyards built over 600 ships for the Union Navy. Southern shipyards produced less than 50 ships for the Confederate Navy. In 1864 Every one of 800,000 Union soldiers received two complete uniforms a year (that’s 1,600,000 uniforms). Confederate soldiers were barefoot in rags.
A 4 to 1 manpower advantage is of little value unless the Government can provide them with the weapons, clothing, rations, horses, artillery, ships etc. Yes Economics does not by itself win a war. But the North’s success over the Confederacy was abetted substantially by it’s great industrial and agricultural capacity.