[FLT-bird]

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.

[DoodleDawg]

This Wigfall whom I had never heard of is one man with one man’s perspective.

You might want to educate yourself on Confederate leadership if you're going to be carrying their water with such enthusiasm.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird re: Wigfall quote "We are an agricultural people; we a primitive but civilized people...":
"This Wigfall whom I had never heard of is one man with one man’s perspective."

Texas Fire Eater Wigfall is often quoted by our Lost Causers to show how mistreated Southerners were.
There are no quotes from 1860 Southerners saying something different.

Wigfall is to the right of the word "Fire-Eaters"

FLT-bird "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."

Fire Eater Rhett said nothing of the sort:

"If they [Northerners] prefer a system of industry in which capital and labor are in perpetual conflict -- and chronic starvation keeps down the natural increase of population -- and a man is worked out in eight years -- and the law ordains that children shall be worked only ten hours a day -- and the sabre and bayonet are the instruments of order -- be it so.
It is their affair, not ours.
We prefer, however, our system of industry:
• by which labor and capital are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor;
  
• by which our population doubles every twenty years;
• by which starvation is unknown, and abundance crowns the land;
• by which order is preserved by unpaid police, and the most fertile regions of the world where the Caucasian cannot labor are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our own productions. "

Rhett sounds like "slavery, slavery, slavery" to me.