Question
"The [US population]not only outnumbered the rebels, but its
other resources also dwarfed the Confederacy's. The North's
wartime expenditures totaled over three billion dollars, two-
thirds of it spent on military supplies..
Northern industry thus
went into overdrive during the war.
"The South also developed manufacturing capacity, but
because the region was largely wedded to single-crop
agriculture, it depended heavily on imported military supplies.
One telling comparison: on the war's eve, Southern shops
manufactured four million pairs of shoes annually whereas
Massachusetts alone produced over forty million pairs..
-Source: Louis P. Masur and J. Ronald Spencer, historians, "Civil
War Mobilizations." OAH Magazine of History, 2012
Which of the following contributed most directly to the trend described in
the excerpt?
Answer
The North's superior resources and industrial capacity contributed most directly to the trend described in the excerpt.