Discuss the political, social, and economic issues affecting the home fronts in the North and South during the Civil War and the way these issues influenced the war. Which side faced greater problems and why?

Some of the most significant problems that both the Union and Confederate sides had to contend with during the Civil War were the rapidly changing economic, social, and environmental circumstances that the conflict had caused. In the North, tax revenue, primarily derived from the sale of agricultural products, was only able to cover about 20 percent of the costs of the war, forcing the federal government to begin issuing its own paper money. This resulted in a devaluation of the value of gold and silver, as the new paper money was not backed by anything other than a government guarantee of its value (known as “fiat” money) and damaged some banks that still relied on the gold standard. Furthermore, some businessmen were able to trick government contractors by providing them poor-quality goods for quick cash exchanges, making a fortune in the process.
The Southern economy relied heavily on import and export duties for its wartime revenue, but these too were too little to cover all of the war’s expenses. To compensate, the Confederacy began to issue bonds and tax all Southern property, but the only effect of this was to massively increase inflation and make basic commodities like wheat and flour unpurchaseable.
Abraham Lincoln had to contend with both a general public sympathetic to the Southern plight and suffering (as it was the North that had started the conflict) and the emergence of a politically disloyal faction of Northern politicians called the “Copperheads” who all but directly supported the Confederate cause. To deal with the growing protest, Lincoln cracked down hard and made over 14,000 arrests. The Southern social body suffered, too, as thousands of black slaves fled North to join the Union army. Lincoln had promised freedom and a full education to any black patriot who was willing to fight against the Southern armies, and this massive emigration of black inhabitants deprived Southern plantation owners and other businesses their primary source of labor power. On both sides, North and South, ordinary civilians expressed extreme misgivings at the prospects of having to kill other Americans in a pointless and brutal conflict.
Finally, the war devastated the Southern ecology much more heavily than that in the North, as much of the fighting took place south of the thirty-sixth parallel. Toward the end of the war, more than 500 horses were dying per day in the South, and by the wars end, the hog population had been so decimated that Southern farmers could no longer rely on their own supplies to feed their communities but rather had to import pork from the Midwest. Craters formed by cannonballs created new gullies for the accumulation of rancid water, poisoning livestock and significantly increasing outbreaks of malaria due to the rise in the mosquito population.
Thus, overall, the Civil War does seem to have been much more devastating for the South than for the north. This is because most of the fighting happened in Southern territory as well as because it was, after all, the Southern, slave-based plantation way of life that was destroyed as a result of the Union victory.