“The Southern states WERE being economically exploited.”
You might want to rethink that.
“Studies of the past few decades, however, have seriously questioned the old assumption of a markedly inferior Southern economy in the pre-war years...
Southern white per capita income exceeded the national average and compared favorably with that of the Northeast. The West South Central region exceeded the Northeast in per capita income in 1840, even considering the slaves as part of the population...
Revising Easterlin’s data, Stanley Engerman found a higher rate of growth of Southern per capita income over Northern between 1840 and 1860, 1.6 percent versus 1.3 percent if slaves are counted in the population. 1.8 percent versus 1.3 percent if only the free population is considered...
The study, however, that gives the hammer blow to the idea that the antebellum South was poor, or even had wealth inequality greatly exceeding that of the North, is Lee Soltow’s Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850 – 1870. Basing his study primarily on “spin samples” of the 1850, 1860, and 1870 censuses, but also buttressed by the published census data, Soltow gives some startling statistics which confirm the wealth of the antebellum South.”
Was the South Poor Before the War?
By William Cawthon
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/was-the-south-poor-before-the-war/
“The Southern states WERE being economically exploited.”
You might want to rethink that.
You can’t be getting screwed or get a bad deal if you are rich? You can’t be still fairly well off but not nearly as well off as you would be if you weren’t getting screwed?
Of course you can. The South was doing most of the exporting. Had they been independent, they would have been far wealthier.