I will have to question that one. By the 1860s, the industrialists of the North were already amassing huge fortunes, such as the Vanderbilts, who were building a railroad empire.
The wealth of the plantation owners of the South was greatly overstated due to the free labor they enjoyed. Everything was done for them for free and all they had to do was sit on the veranda and have refreshments brought to them so they could certainly have the appearance of being very wealthy. But in reality, they created very little wealth. Which was why when slavery was abolished, the South instantly became the poorest region in the country and even to this day, there are pockets of poverty that go back to Civil War days.
As the Industrial Age boomed after Reconstruction, nearly all the great fortunes were made north of the Mason-Dixon line. The white Southerners as a whole had no work ethic. They considered menial work "demeaning" because up to that point, only slaves had been asked to do it.
People of the North had no issue rolling up their sleeves and being industrious. People of the North were derided by Southerners as "mechanics" and "city slickers" but they were were mostly the ones that turned the United States into an economic juggernaut and the envy of the entire world.
I know that does not fit with what some may want to believe but there it is.
http://civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm
But in reality, they created very little wealth. Which was why when slavery was abolished, the South instantly became the poorest region in the country and even to this day, there are pockets of poverty that go back to Civil War days.
Not exactly. See that $4000 of per capita wealth in 1860. About half was the value of slaves, and a great deal of the rest was physically destroyed during the fighting.
The South had spent 50 years investing all its capital in slaves and ALL that accumulated capital just went poof. No wonder they were poor after the war and took a long time to recover.
And my impression lies somewhere between yours and BroJoeK’s. I’m not sure how one would ever quantify the “relative well-being” of a class of citizens, but I imagine the equation would be complicated.
It seems like there has always been a disparity between the extremely poor and the extremely wealthy, and our nation is no different. Georgia Girl 2 rightly points out that slave ownership wasn’t universal or even prominent - in the south or anywhere else. It was a pricy proposition so the owner(s) needed to take heed that their investments paid off.
I’m going to have to do some more research to see if I can find actual wealth figures for individuals in order to better quantify my impressions.
One thing is inarguable - the prosperity and consequent well-being of all southerners was borne on the shoulders of slave labor.
Not disputing most of your facts & interpretations, which are spot on.
But up through 1860, the world looked very different, beginning with the fact that slaves represented the second largest investment value in the United States -- second only to the land itself, and indeed of far more value than all the northern industrial assets combined.
And the numbers of wealthy slave-owners in 1860 was far larger than the tiny number of wealthy northern industrialists.
Yes, today's Lost Causers do their best to minimize the impact of slavery, through statistical manipulations, but the fact is that nearly half of Deep-South families owned slaves, almost a third in the Upper South, all of whom eventually declared their secession.
Secessionists declared slavery to be the greatest invention for increasing wealth ever devised, and it resulted in average Southerners slightly more prosperous than their Northern cousins, while many large plantation owners were better off than all but the very most prosperous Northern industrialists.
Indeed, it's totally accurate & fair to say that secession and war were caused directly by Southern fears of anti-slavery policies from newly elected President Lincoln and his "Black Republicans".