I fear that you've entirely misinterpreted my post. I put skeptical quotation marks around "improve" because the things that Yankee liberals consider improvements, like a powerful centralized government, extensive social services, higher taxes, gun control, and modernization--are not actually improvements at all, in the view of conservatives. I stated that Yankee conservatives (particularly rural Yankee conservatives) and Southern conservatives have much in common in their values, which do not generally include these so-called improvements.
Calhoun was all for improvements too, but couldn't get the Fed to fund it.
So the states in the North funded the improvements. The South slipped ever further behind.
That is what happens if you create a society where anyone who actually works degrades themself.
No one wants to silence you. But we can laugh at you, can't we?
The south was all for a powerful central government when it came to using the US Marshall to track down their "property", and even getting the Marshall to whip their runaway property property, as has been documented that Robert E. Lee did.
That the slaves in question had been granted freedom by their owner (his wife's fathter) in his will, well that didn't seem to matter to Master Robert, that paragon of Morality.
We still don't know if his slave, Nancy, had his children, or had her children by someone else. Was he her pimp, or did he do the job himself, or was it some combination of the two? We may never know.
Oh, but what a wonderful society they had. One we should all emulate, to be sure (sarcasm light is on).