Reply #106: Demanding instant change? [View All]

[LostInAnomie]

You've got to be kidding me.

With around 90% of their economy based in agriculture, especially very profitable and slave labor intensive cotton crops, the South had no reason to ever accept industrialization. The slavery culture of the South let the landed gentry reap huge profits, and it gave the poor whites a social class that they could look down on no matter how backwards they were themselves.

I will agree with your partly. The war was about money, for the rich whites in the South. They fought to preserve their investment, no matter how immoral it was.

For the poor whites the war was about social class. They fought to preserve to a social structure where no matter how poor, uneducated, and backwards they were they could at least feel superior to slaves.

No matter how you slice it it all go back to the fact that they war was about slavery.