Would the north be better off with out the south?

"Without the South, the US would lose a great deal of its economic dynamism. And unless there was free migration between the two nations, northerners would lose a valuable foot voting option. In fairness, the South would never have achieved its recent economic successes without investment by northern and foreign business interests. But the issue is not whether southerners are solely responsible for the region’s revival since the 1960s, but whether southern secession today would leave the rest of the nation better off."

I don't get around the country much, but I suspect things in Charlotte or Atlanta are looking a lot better than in Cleveland or Buffalo. There's more entrepreneurial spirit there today, and more profits probably go to those Southern cities than to the old rust belt ones, whatever one might say about New York City or Boston or Los Angeles.

And those you often argue with on these threads don’t want to hear that the war could have been avoided by national investment and the South enabled to recover by it.

Spoken like a true Whig. And I don't disagree. But "national investment" is the last thing antebellum Southern Democrats (a majority in the Southern states) wanted. They didn't think they needed "internal improvements," or the taxes to pay for them. "National investment" also would have threatened the "sovereignty" of state governments and the power of the planters.

And after the Civil War, a "Marshall Plan" for the South? Well, it's not something people thought of at the time -- or even after WWI. After bitter wars, an act of such generosity (with other people's money or with one's own) would have been too much to ask for. That the country managed to go on without more trouble and rancor than we actually did go through was enough for most Northerners.

A program of "national investment" for the South would have gone against limited government principles. It would also potentially have threatened Southern White control over the Black population. Certainly when it was attempted generations after the war, the effect was to open up racial and political divisions. So I doubt such a program was ever seriously in the cards.

The most illuminating thing I heard about the South and the North came form an old black friend in Mass. many years ago: “We had it good here until those [southern] ‘field niggers’ started coming up here”.

A lot of people posting here claim to have Northern friends or acquaintances who freely toss around the n-word. It's kind of a tradition. This is the first Black one I recall, though. I've never actually met any of those Northerners who are n-wording all the time, so I have to wonder how many of them are real.

Apart from that, it's not a foolish or malign policy -- at least not any more foolish or malign than the rest of the welfare state may be. In recent decades most of the job growth has been south of the Mason-Dixon line (or south of the Rio Grande). It doesn't make much sense for Southerners to come North for jobs that don't exist or aren't being created up here, or for welfare benefits that are determined by the high cost of living in Northern cities, rather than lower cost of living in the rural South.

Oh, the ‘n-word- (if you wish) is thrown around by the young and lower class negroes. Though not in ‘polite company’ in my experience. It seems as much of a fad for the last decade or less as ‘far out’ was when I was young.
I don’t know why that would come into civil war arguments and don’t care. I’ll take your word it’s used somehow to make some point about something...

However I’m talking about the 70’s when the word would never be used by self-respecting people of any color. And by a 60 year old (professional but non-teaching) Harvard employee!
He was very angry at the influx and had obviously personally suffered from bigotry engendered by it.

I was aware that my friend’s quote might elicit a dilatory response.
But I found and find it revelatory still, just as he put it. The mere history of the problems with negro migration to midwest jobs- the usual locale for discussion of the ‘keep the negroes in the south’ aspect of the CRA and War On Poverty- isn’t as viscerally striking.

“... It would also potentially have threatened Southern White control over the Black population.”

And the profits of the Northern owners.

The North bought up any business for it’s debts- for pennies- and took the profits home. Coal, railroads, lumber were in demand and the North got them. Carpetbaggers weren’t a myth.
The North, the champions of national investment, would have been denying their own wallets to have national investment in the South.
The looting of the South is why the South has struggled so hard just to get where it is. Until almost WW2 the South had no capital of it’s own. And, they had to face the problem of dealing with freed slaves without it. A problem whose difficulty had daunted our Founders’ imaginations even in a time of relative plenty.
What a combination: no money and a huge number of freed slaves.
Yes, the last few decades have been a time of growth in the South. It’s been a long road.

We probably would have even worse corruption if the early republic had, say, passed the Bonus Bill of 1817 Madison vetoed. Though it’s hard to see how.
But the patriotic Virginians who founded the country knew roads and canals tying VA to it’s sons in the midwest were neccessary to preserve the union. And since the plantation owners had no reason to fund them the money to do so and save the union could have only come from the feds. The Erie canal tied the Northwest territories to the North instead and sealed the South’s fate.

However I’m talking about the 70’s when the word would never be used by self-respecting people of any color. And by a 60 year old (professional but non-teaching) Harvard employee!

I guess. A lot of these stories about Southerners who meet a Northerner and are shocked! shocked! by use of the n-word probably go back to 30 or 40 or 50 years. But when you go back that far the shock may have been more about the word itself or the fact that a Northerner was using it than about the sentiments expressed.

But the patriotic Virginians who founded the country knew roads and canals tying VA to it’s sons in the midwest were neccessary to preserve the union. And since the plantation owners had no reason to fund them the money to do so and save the union could have only come from the feds.

Washington, sure. Clay, maybe Marshall. For a time even Calhoun. But patriotic Virginia plantation owners were the federal government for a quarter century -- Jefferson, Madison, Monroe -- and they opposed federal spending on the canals or roads that would have benefited Virginia and the South. Not all the time, but often enough to put a damper on such projects. And Southern Democrats, an important bloc in the party and the country, didn't cotton to federal construction projects until about the 1930s.

Geography may have played a role, though. The terrain in upstate New York wasn't as mountainous, so a canal was more practical and economical than one built across the Appalachians in the South would have been.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.