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If you read about the economics of this period you'll find that, as with most of history, the reality isn't this simple. A lot of Southern capital went into fin

If you read about the economics of this period you'll find that, as with most of history, the reality isn't this simple. A lot of Southern capital went into financing Northern industry, for example. It's difficult to neatly divide the nation's economy in this way as if they were two separate spheres, as much they as they may have want to think of themselves that way.

WalterBright 8y ago
Not one southern city industrialized. Investors tend to invest in things they know about and can keep an eye on, which tends to be local. Investment capital uniformly fleeing the slave states to the free ones suggests that investing in slave states was a bad investment. In those days, different states were like different countries today.
- zeveb 8y ago
  > Not one southern city industrialized. There's also the climate of the South to consider — until the invention of air-conditioning, factory work in the South would have been at a significant disadvantage. Malaria, too, was an issue within living memory. People don't realise nowadays how very inhospitable warm climates can be.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    And yet millions of people lived and worked there. Agricultural work is backbreaking. The South didn't even have a shoe factory. Really, how productive can a workforce be that can't read, that have to be forced to do anything, that will not contribute any improvements, that have to be guarded at all times, that will sabotage the work if they can get away with it, etc.? How productive would you be if you were a slave? Slavery is a terrible economic system when compared with free labor. It isn't remotely a surprise that free economies economically bury slave economies.