[Non-Sequitur]

Slavery was a serious economic drain on the south because, in addition to the cost of slavery, the south had a very small middle class since slaves had no buying power and there was no way establish an entrepreneurial class or any industrial base.

Slavery was hardly an economic drain, rather it was what made rich Southern planters rich southern planters. The 4 million or so slaves in the U.S. in 1861 had a total value of upwards of $4 billion.

The South had as much of what we would call a middle class as the North did. And most slave owners where probably part of it. Most slave owners were small time, owning 5 or fewer. And many, perhaps most slaves never saw the inside of a cotton field, either. They were cooks, butlers, maids, grooms, gardeners, what have you. Thomas Jackson, a university professor and as solidly middle-class as they come, owned as many as 10 slaves at one time, buying them and selling them as the need arose.

[muir_redwoods]

So where were their entrepreneurs? Where was their industrial base? Where were the businesses that the North had? Other than farming and agricultural related businesses where would a non-farmer work? Why did the South have to export their cotton instead of establishing vertically integrated businesses that would have spun the cotton and weaved the cotton into fabrics?

Sure a few planters got rich but the army the south fielded were often unshod and ill-equipped. Slavery cost the south its economic potential and retarded the economic growth of the region for more than a century after the war.