"There were difficulties to be overcome before direct importations could be established other than deficiency of capital and credit, the long credit system, or the absence of a thoroughly Southern mercantile class. One lay in the comparatively small amounts of foreign goods consumed in the South. There is no way of calculating accurately the value of the foreign imports consumed in territory naturally tributary to Southern seaports; but the probabilities are that it did not so greatly exceed the direct importations as Southerners generally supposed. Some Southern writers made the palpably untenable assumption that the Southern population consumed foreign goods equal in value to their exports to foreign countries, that is about two-thirds or three-fourths of the nation's exports, or imports.More reasonable was the assumption that the per capita consumption of imported goods in the South was equal to that of the North; but even that would seem to have been too liberal. A much higher percentage of the Northern population was urban; and the per capita consumption of articles of commerce by an urban population is greater than the per capita consumption by a rural population. Southern writers made much of the number of rich families in the South who bought articles of luxury imported from abroad; but there is no doubt that the number of families who lived in luxury was exaggerated. That the slaves consumed comparatively small quantities of foreign goods requires no demonstration. Their clothing and rough shoes were manufactured either in the North or at home. Their chief articles of food (corn and bacon) were produced at home or in the West. The large poor white element in the population consumed few articles of commerce, either domestic or foreign. The same is true of the rather large mountaineer element, because, if for no other reason, they lived beyond the routes of trade. Olmsted had these classes in mind when he wrote: "I have never seen reason to believe that with absolute free trade the cotton States would take a tenth part of the value of our present importations." One of the fairest of the many English travelers wrote: "But the truth is, there are few imports required, for every Southern town tells the same tale."
--ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF SOUTHERN SECTIONALISM, 1840-1861
Robert Royal Russel, 1924
Here is some information for you:
1860s....A Decade of Massive Growth in Southern Wealth,
The American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the South to the midlands. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.
Far from stagnating due to its labor pool as many have suggested, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the South than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time, surpassing the status of many European countries.
Although primarily a rural land, the South in 1860 had a lively urban population that included merchants and manufacturers centered in 20 cities with over 10,000 population each, the largest of which were Charleston and New Orleans.
By 1860, the South had more than $96,000,000 invested in about 20,000 factories. Nearly 110,000 factory workers were turning out products worth approximately $155,000,000 annually. Many of the laborers toiled in the plants only a portion of their time, for many of the factories still operated on the old domestic or putting-out system.
The professional classes of the South were not unlike anywhere else, except that their prosperity depended upon the success of the planters. The doctors, lawyers, journalists, and career-military officers - economically and socially tied into the planter economy. By 1850, non-slaveholding white farmers were increasing more rapidly as a group than were slaveholders.
The Southern economy had changed greatly in the decade of the 1850’s. Southern banking had grown extensively. At the end of 1859, the amount of money on hand in Southern banks was 20% higher than in Northeastern banks.
The growth in personal wealth in the South in the 1850’s was extensive. From the 1850 census, and state census records in 1858, the value of land and personal property had increased by 57%, while the same measure in the Northeast showed an increase of only 11%.
The typical southern state farm in 1860 had a valuation of $7,101. In the northern states this figure was $3,311.
Other industries that the South had historically ignored were receiving investment. Southern shipbuilding had grown to the point that there were in 1859 145 ship-building locations in the South that turned out 43,000 ship tons constructed that year. Southern shipyards were turning out both steam and sail powered vessels for the coastal and river trade.
The harbor in Charleston was being dredged in order to accommodate deep draft vessels used in transatlantic trade. Neither shipbuilding nor dredging was underwritten by any US Treasury money.
In 1853, the Southern states had 26% of the total railroad mileage in the country for 23% of the US population.
By 1859 according to the Boston Railway Times, there were 27,000 miles of railroads in the United States and that the Southern states percentage had grown to one third of the total of miles built. In addition to this fact, the railroads in the South had been constructed with private monies instead of Federal subsidies, were paid for, and had been cheaper to construct.
Connecting rail lines enabled a complete journey from practically any major Southern city on the Atlantic coast all the way to Monroe, Louisiana. A north/south journey followed connecting rail lines from New Orleans to Memphis and beyond the Ohio River.
In the deep west of the South, connecting rail lines reached from the east coast almost all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas with only a few miles over land in a rural unconstructed segment between the eastern end of the Little Rock line and the western end of the line crossing the Mississippi river.
Of all the CSA states, only Texas was unreachable by rail from the east coast in 1860. Texas had its own rail system stretching from the Sabine River border with Louisiana to Columbus, half way between Houston and San Antonio. Plans had been underway to connect the Sabine end to New Orleans and with it any point on the east coast since the 1850’s but engineering was difficult because the connection had to cross the swamps of western Louisiana.
This railroad capacity, plus the new shipbuilding abilities, meant that the South was becoming highly competitive in the transportation business. Thus the value of shipping from Southern harbors increased.
All the profitable branches of commercialism that thrived on the movement of Southern goods—freighting, brokering, selling, banking, insurance, storage—found in the Northeast, were receiving increased competition from businessmen in the South.
A rapidly growing group of people in the South were the “free blacks”. “Free”, in reference to Southern black Americans who were not slaves. They had been freed by former masters legally, had bought their way out of slavery from masters who allowed it, or had been born to manumitted slaves.
Most of the 250,000 free blacks lived in Virginia and Maryland, but clusters could also be found in Louisiana, particularly around New Orleans, in North Carolina, Tennessee, and in the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. Free Southern blacks in most communities held unskilled jobs, working usually as farm hands or day laborers. Some were trained as artisans and followed trades such as carpentry or shoemaking.
A few became wealthy, like Thomy Lafon, a New Orleans tycoon who amassed a fortune of over $500,000.
The “Charleston Mercury” reported in its Sunday, September 8, 1861, edition that free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, had contributed $450 to the Confederate war effort.
Some free blacks became slaveholders themselves. Carter G. Woodson, a pioneer black historian, reported that 4,071 free blacks held 13,446 slaves in 1830. The largest concentration of black slaveholders were around New Orleans (753 owners with 2,351 slaves) Richmond, and in Maryland.
The final class in the South was the black slave. The slave existed in a closed system. Some masters allowed their slaves to purchase their freedom but the vast majority were the unconditional property of their masters. The master defined the slave's role, provided them with a clear and simple script, judged their performance, and rewarded or punished them according to its quality. In this closed system the slave had only limited contacts with free society. The masters provided the food, clothing, and shelter for their slaves.
Many slaves worked under the “task” system. This system provided the slave with a set of tasks to be completed within a given period of time. Should those tasks be completed before the given period of time had elapsed, the slave could then spend time in leisure, hire themselves out (with the foreknowledge of the master), or could work producing goods that could be sold, with the slave retaining all of the profits made from the sale. It was under the task system that some slaves were made able to buy their freedom.
With regard to housing, in the North there were 1.13 families per dwelling. In the West, the housing ratio was 1.02, and the South was 1.01. Therefore, the Southern family had at least the same or better accommodations.
In 1860, Virginia had twenty-three colleges enrolling 2,824 students, as against New York's seventeen colleges listing 2,970 students; and Georgia's thirty-two colleges with 3,302 students nominally overshadowed the eight Massachusetts colleges with 1,733 registrants.
In terms of crime, in the decade of 1850, in the North 1 in 310 blacks were in jail. In the South, 1 in 10,000. Of the white population, in the North 1 in 3000 were in jail. In the South, there were 1 in 5000 in jail.
Net worth of southerners was higher than their counterparts in the North and West.
Personal wealth in ownership of farm implements, machinery, and animals was greater in the South.
When the 1860 Census was completed it was noted that one measure of the census was “True Value of Personal Property” which was the per capita value of owned property. According to this measure of accumulation of personal wealth, the leading and most wealthy states among all of the United States were Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana.
The larger cotton plantations were of such a size and complexity that they were comparable to New England's factories. Lumber and grist mills were typically a part of these plantation's operations. Some had their own cotton gins. Large sugar plantations processed the cane once it was harvested. Some men owned several plantations and, therefore, found hired managers essential.
Slave owners constituted the wealthiest class in the nation. The average slave owner was more than five times as wealthy as the average Northerner; more than ten times as wealthy as the average non-slave holding Southerner.
According to the census, with only 30% of the nation’s (free) population, the South had 60% of the “wealthiest men.” The 1860 individual per capita income in the South was $3,978; in the North it was $2,040.
Former Census Office Director, James DeBow had said in the 1850’s that,
“The proportion (of valuable property ownership) which the slaveholders of the South bear to the entire population is greater than that of the owners of land or houses, agricultural stock, State, Bank or other corporation securities…In the States which are among the largest slaveholding, South Carolina, and Georgia, the land proprietors outnumber nearly two to one, in relative proportion, the owners of the same property in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.”
Citizens of the South thus tended to invest in crop raw materials, farm animals, machinery for farming, slaves to aid in the work, and tracts of real estate.
Of the more than 8 million whites in the American South in 1860, those who owned slaves numbered 383,637. Of those, 2,292 were large planters who held more than 100 slaves.
Indentured slaves, either through the actions of their owners, or their ability to earn money beyond their regular work schedules, eventually earned their freedom. More than a quarter of a million blacks were free in the South during the years preceding the Civil War.
This meant that there were actually more free blacks in the South than there were in the North during these years.