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Too many people see the Civil War in a modern context. They leave out pro-slavery ideologies, Southern nationalism, and racial anxieties and make secessionists something very much like modern-day libertarians, but that would be a mistake. The first and most fervent secessionists weren't particularly concerned with "state's rights." They had little use for Northern state's right to deal with escaped slaves as they saw fit. It was the rights and power of slaveholders and the social order that slavery had produced that were most important to them.

In the upper South, such issues weren't enough to put secession through at first. It required the emotions sparked by Fort Sumter, the upsurge in sectional loyalty and the opposition to federal war measures to make secession win in those states. But even there, it's worth pondering the relationship between freedom and slavery, and not automatically to assume that what the Revolutionaries of 1861 meant by liberty was necessarily what we mean by that word today.

As for slavery and health care, doctors and hospitals weren't as common as today. People would have to rely more on traditional and herbal remedies, and when doctors came they could do much less than they can today. If a slave were seriously ill, a master might well summon a doctor, but it's not clear that slaves got better medical care than free people. More here.

Many slaveholders contrasted the lives of their slaves with the those of slum dwellers in New York, London, or various mill and factory towns. While lives in those places could be truly wretched, it's not clear why this was regarded as the best comparison: why not compare slave's lives with those of small farmers or craftsmen who might be poor, but independent and self-supporting? In any event, it's not automatically clear that slaves got better health care than poor free people could get from doctors or charity wards.

Unless you were Irish, of course -- then they wouldn't treat you at all. ;-)

I think it was less Southern nationalism than state loyalty, but pro-slavery ideology certainly played a substantial part, at least among the leaders of the political class. I disagree re racial anxiety - that is more or less a Northern thing, as most of us in the South have grown up side by side with black people - something that definitely didn't happen up North. (When I happened to be in Muskegon Michigan for a week back in the 70s, the only black person I saw was a one-legged water skier in a touring show.)

Beleive it or not, I got that part of my argument from a book I read witten by a bunch of New England liberals who had done research in the area. What they said fit well into some of the comments AnAmericaMother made about letters from some of her kin that lived during that period such as plantations contracting labor out to other places. They also said the plantations were run like a strict business. I have seen slave quarters that still exist today and each one is different. Some of these were horrible and some were pretty damn nice even by todays standards. I don't know if you have ever been up to the poorer areas of Virgina and West Virgina but there are still a lot of people living in one room houses with dirt floors.

As far as doctors go, I remember a Paul Harvey quip about a doctor from Mississippi who happened to be black and a plantation owner also. This took place during the 1840's and 1850's. He was just basically the best doctor in the area and everyone went to him.

The economy part I got from two seperate history books and the importance of cotton for sails from a few books about nautical history and how ships influance the world economy, especially at that time.

The main thing I concluded in all I have read was the North and the South were two completely different worlds at that time and sooner or later they were going to collide.

If I had lived back then and been a career soldier and knowing the true issues, I would have had a hard time trying to decide which side to fight on. I would have probably fought for the North.

On a diferent subject brought up on the reference you used. Look at all the photograths of hospitals that time. If you look close at almost all of them, those places are spotless and clean.