By comparison maybe. But look at the census data. For every town and city dweller in the North there were a five who lived on a farm. Both were primarily agrarian societies.
Therefore, Lincoln would have had a different resource base to tax than did the Confederacy.
He did indeed. He had an economy to generate tax revenue from. Imports to collect tariffs on. A solid government that would allow for issuing debt. The U.S. wasn't the basket case the confedercy had become very early in their rebellion. So I suppose that Davis had to grab what he could get in whatever way he could get it.
Bingo! Spot on. I think one of the few consensus points that exists about the war was that the South did not have the industrial infrastructure needed to fund an extended war or produce its war materials.
‘The U.S. wasn’t the basket case the confedercy had become very early in their rebellion’
True. The North was a ‘basket case’ when it came to the leaders it installed at the head of the various army’s it had in the field.
I’ve always thought Stonewall Jackson would have had his ass handed to him during his famous ‘Valley Campaign’ if he had encountered just one competent General in opposition, for example. Years later, Grant expressed a similiar point of view in his memoirs. What would have happened if Sheridan, or Sherman, or even Meade, let alone a Hancock had been there instead of Fremont?
I do love this era, and the what ifs.