Thank-You Bull Snipe for your response to the question of no manufacturing in the southern states. Looking back at what you printed about the southern attitude: maybe the south goofed on the side of aristocratic arrogance. Manufacturing and shipping would have produced a middle class segment to the southern economy which would have created a new group of wealthy men who would have been equal or more powerful than the traditional plantation owners. A fully functioning economy would have more that one productive segment.
Think you are correct.
There was some manufacturing in the South but it paled in comparison to the North. In 1860, in the North, there were 1.3 million industrial workers employed in 110,000 manufacturing operations. In the South, 110,000 industrial workers employed in 18,000 manufacturing operations. Like all facets of the Southern economy, slave labor was employed to some extent in all Southern manufacturing operations.
What I find interesting is that much of the Antebellum Southern industrialists looked inward for their markets. The sort of industry you might encounter was complementary to their behemoth cotton industry. So you would see textile mills and foundries, but poised to service King Cotton instead of external markets.
As a result of the necessities of war, southern industries sprang up, but again they were to for internal “consumption” and not export to foreign markets.
Indeed, it wasn’t until the advent of affordable air conditioning that big industry took hold in the south.