[Non-Sequitur]

BTW A block of subsistance farmers, slave owning or not, is not a middle class.

No, but a block of teachers, lawyers, doctors, and merchants are. And there was a solid middle class in the south, certainly as large a percentage of the population as in the North.

[muir_redwoods]

You are simply wrong and we simply disagree. A middle class is impossible in a culture with a preponderance of the workforce enslaved. It is simply impossible. Rome didn't have one, Ancient Greece didn't have one and it wasn't until capitalism was invented and slavery was done away with that a middle class emerged.

Slavery doomed the south economically depriving it of a middle class with significant purchasing power and it wasn't until slavery was abolished that the south became an economic powerhouse. History and facts cannot be denied.