Southern culture was woefully deficient prior to the war. Slavery crippled all intellectual and moral abilities. It was a system which fostered and thrived on ignorance unfortunately everything else suffered. That is the real history of southern slavery.
Interesting you would say slavery crippled "intellectual abilities".....Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John Calhoun, Roger Taney, and the list goes on and on.......all of these men were slave owners, and intellectual giants.
Your argument doen't hold up.