The cotton South overall was already hugely wealthy.
So the issue here is, who owned the transportation, banking, warehousing & insurance needed to get product into customers' hands?
No doubt some of that was already owned by Southerners, and I'd argue it certainly didn't require independence for Southerners to own more of it.
It only really required that more devote themselves to such enterprises, but here we run into the Wigfall rules:
Wigfall's words do not suggest a people chomping at the bit and raring to go towards modern industrialization and finance centered economies.
BroJoeK The cotton South overall was already hugely wealthy.
So the issue here is, who owned the transportation, banking, warehousing & insurance needed to get product into customers’ hands?
No doubt some of that was already owned by Southerners, and I’d argue it certainly didn’t require independence for Southerners to own more of it.
It only really required that more devote themselves to such enterprises, but here we run into the Wigfall rules:
“We are an agricultural people; we a primitive but civilized people.
We have no cities-we don’t want them.
We have no literature-we don’t need any yet.
We have no press-we are glad of it.
We have no commercial marine-no navy-we don’t want them.
Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels.
We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes.
As long as we have our cotton, our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from these nations with which we are in amity.”
Wigfall’s words do not suggest a people chomping at the bit and raring to go towards modern industrialization and finance centered economies.
This Wigfall whom I had never heard of is one man with one man’s perspective. No doubt had the Southern states been independent, there would have arisen industries to service those valuable exports. Servicing exports was lucrative. Rhett talked about this in his Address.