Naval Strength
This point is a bit murkier, and is less arguable on the side of the North, in some places. In terms of Naval Strength at the beginning of the war, you have to define what you mean. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy had real warships that you could use to fight the war. At the start of 1860, the North had 50 (decrepit is a word used to describe them most often) ships, but none of them fell into the category of “warship,” at least in terms of what you’d see near the end of the war. The South had nothing, as they were basically starting from scratch.
Playing into this, however, was something we already talked about: manufacturing strength. Because the North was able to manufacture their own vessels because of already existing infrastructure, they had quite an advantage over the South who had to both import vessels and build an infrastructure to manufacture their own navy, something that took a lot of time.
Now, as we said at the beginning of this part, this isn’t as clear-cut as you might expect. The main reason was that what advantage the Union started off with was offset by some brilliant strategy and an amazing ability to catch up by the South. While the North had an advantage of population, that didn’t translate to a large navy as it did with the army. This put them on much more equal fronts than what was usual for the other fronts of the war.
In the end, it is debatable how much of an influence the Navy had on the outcome of the Civil War. It was incredibly important, but the war of the sea was very much a war of attrition, though the battles were awe-inspiring, the most efficient use of their navies once established was using them to blockade and attack merchant ships, affecting the economies of both the North and the South.