Data Literacy for Social Studies, Tons of Coal Mined, Union vs. Confederacy, 1860

We created this bar graph using data from the 1860 US Census to compare tons of coal mined in the Union and Confederate states in 1860. The spreadsheets found here include the graph, the original table, and a recreated table. The graph represents the combined totals of both anthracite and bituminous coal. Only two states had anthracite mines: Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. As the graph illustrates, the Union states mined significantly more coal in 1860 than the Confederate states, with Pennsylvania as the leading producer of both types of coal. Coal would be an important source of energy during the Civil War. As stated in the Census report, “...a dynamic agent in maintaining the activity of our workshops, railways, and steamboats, as an employer of active, intelligent, and moral labor, and of well directed capital, if not in its actual commercial value, there is no doubt that the mineral coal of the United States is a more potential element in the general prosperity of the country, material and moral, than the gold of California, however abundant” (pg. clxv). During the Civil War, the Confederacy depended heavily on coal mined around Richmond, Virginia.