US industrialized first (and most) in the parts without slaves. That slavery is bad for industrial production was a major abolitionist argument. It's been repe

US industrialized first (and most) in the parts without slaves. That slavery is bad for industrial production was a major abolitionist argument. It's been repeated for at least 150-200 years. de Tocqueville dedicates many pages to just that aspect. He describes sailing down the Ohio, seeing on the right bank teeming with factories and mills, and on the left one only loafers and undeveloped land. In pop culture too; in Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler is the cosmopolitan embarrassing the old southern aristocrats at cocktails parties, regaling stories about the Union being flush with money and factories, the south being a backwater. That's how he knew which way the war would go.