The legacy of the South with respect to labor can be interpreted as a leftover element of mercantilism: One of the key elements of many mercantile writers(who

The legacy of the South with respect to labor can be interpreted as a leftover element of mercantilism: One of the key elements of many mercantile writers(who would be seen as rent-seekers today) was that labor should be made cheap and highly available for national prosperity, and this idea co-mingled with various legalized denials of liberties(enslavement, debt bondage, impressment). They were not challenged at first: Nobody had put together the argument that rent-seeking might be bad for the nation, and the early modern period is colored by this attitude being normalized. It was not until the late 17th century that you started to get writers like Hobbes and Locke that were thinking about liberties across a society, and they struggled to reconcile the nation, the leadership, the people, and the property as they existed under the merchantilist model into one coherent system, which makes their reasoning often feel alienating or poorly articulated today. The arguments that ultimately challenged the model and led towards utilitarianism and free trade occurred much later, in the 18th century - Bentham, Smith, Mill, etc. By this time the colonial project in the South was well underway, with established stakeholders under the plantation model; and so the argument proceeds that the ideals of merchantalism have held more staying power there than elsewhere, even as the institutions have changed. The North, in contrast, had fewer ties to bonded labor, and so made a smoother transition into capitalist thinking.