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To: BroJoeK
Good work -- and definitive on the issue.

The South's large plantation owning slaveholders were not just wealthy but also astonishing in their pride and unreality about what secession would set in motion. Cotton and other plantation crops like tobacco and rice were so lucrative that British and US merchant banks had branches in the South's significant port cities. These included Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Richmond, and New Orleans, of course, but also Pensacola, Wilmington, and Apalachicola.

So, with cash and access to credit, why didn't the Antebellum South also develop industry on a significant scale as the North did? Textile factories would have been a natural fit. Yet, aside from railroads, which served the transport needs of the plantation economy, there was little interest in industry because plantation slavery was so lucrative.

Eventually, during and after the Civil War, the South developed an industrial base. Yet, for decades, its growth was impeded by the South's endemic poverty, poor educational system, and the dismal effects of segregation. The modern South is different of course, and in many respects, a better place to live than the North.

195 posted on 03/22/2026 12:38:43 PM PDT by Rockingham
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To: Rockingham
Good work -- and definitive on the issue.

Well we can tell you didn't actually go through it with a critical eye.

I won't bother. I've done it too many times in the past, and BroJoeK won't blink an eye when you find something wrong. He'll just put it out again later when he thinks you've forgotten.

208 posted on 03/23/2026 7:44:28 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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