Opportunities Quotes
Despite this economic reality, many underdeveloped nations sell their raw materials because it is easier than the alternative which takes capital investment in processing plants and equipment, training of workers, and establishing a marketing mechanism. Most third world nations are limited in their capacity to do this but they have abundant natural resources.
The principle holds for politics also. The largest social problems the politician faces are the greatest opportunity for him/her to create a program to solve or ameliorate the problem.
Grant’s overall strategy of attrition of the Southern troops and interdicting supplies and targeting Southern manufacturing and transportation was taking its toll and the Confederates tried a desperate gamble. Robert E. Lee’s tried to attack the Union in the North—Pennsylvania and Maryland threatening Washington and hoping to force the Union to sue for peace. But that left the Eastern part of the Southern heartland relatively undefended. Grant and Sherman, noting the opportunity, then sent Sherman to take Atlanta and destroy all the factories, railroads, and warehouses of food, arms and munitions, then march to the sea and back up the Atlantic Seaboard, freeing slaves and destroying anything and everything that could support an Army and putting enormous pressure on the Southern men fighting with Lee to return home and prevent starvation as there were now few slaves to work the farms. It was the stroke that, as intended, crippled the Confederacy’s ability to wage war. But Grant and Sherman both credited the Southern strategy with opening the opportunity—hence it was the Confederacy that “planned” Sherman’s March. The details of the plan were worked out by Sherman and his staff.
