A reader writes:
As a native Southerner and someone who lived in the Northeast for a considerable amount of time, I can tell you that attitudes such as those suggested of Southerners by a previous reader go both ways.
My accent immediately identified me as an outsider to many native Northeasterners and was often followed by an attitude of dismissiveness in personal and professional settings. (Anecdotal this may be, but no more so than the previous reader’s comment regarding non-Southern contractors.) While suggesting that Southern clients only hire Southern contractors, it seems that the reader is suggesting that non-Southern transplants are only hiring other non-Southern contractors. This would seem to support the idea that no matter where you go, there will always be a segment of the population for whom you are an outsider and that people will likely favor individuals or groups with whom they feel a greater degree of familiarity. C’est la vie.
But considering the most recent census data showing many Americans relocating to the South, surely us Southerners aren't too disagreeable.
Another writes:
The history professor blames emancipation for helping to underdevelop the South, claiming, "Emancipation meant the destruction of $4 billion of Southern capital." If the economic value of a slave was the value of his future expected labor, less the cost of his subsistence, then to destroy his value as an asset would require that he be killed or disabled. In fact, Emancipation simply took that value from the slaveholder and returned it to the former slave, the rightful owner. For this transfer to be destructive of economic value workers would have to have been more productive enslaved than working freely for wages, which is unlikely.
The historian seems to suggest that possession of slaves had become a status symbol, causing overinvestment in this variety of asset. If this is true, then there was a "slave bubble", the popping of which would have erased value with or without Emancipation. In fact, if slavery had still existed when the bubble popped, the result would have been terrific brutality, as slave owners attempted to use starvation and the whip to salvage what profit they could. The rationalizing force of the market took the evil that was always present in slavery and made it an efficient evil.
Another:
This is more of a question for the history professor who estimates $4 billion loss in capital due to emancipation. The 14th Amendment also declared "illegal and void" any "debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States" and prohibited the US and States from paying such debts and obligations. It is my understanding that the CSA government and the Confederate states borrowed heavily to finance its end of the Civil War, including the sale of bonds to individuals. Has this loss of capital been calculated? I would imagine any financial institution, investor, or any individual who bought a Confederate bond would have been financially destroyed more by this than by emancipation.
Another:
The Confederate states had, and have always had, two things going against them:
1.) Water. The map you published showed the only wealthy areas of the south were either on the coast or next to the Mississippi. When boats were still the main form of transportation, business was more lucrative in places with access to the Ocean, either via the Mississippi and Ohio, or via the Great Lakes.
2.) Heat. Its no coincidence the growth in the modern South corresponds with the development of air conditioning. Early manufacturing was a hot process, and it was impossible to keep things cool enough to keep factories habitable and prevent machines from breaking. Until the Tennessee Valley Authority and beyond, the South remained a place where it was too hot to mechanize, and with little access to inland water transportation. That's more important than any cultural factor.
Another:
It's also interesting to point out how the cheap workforce and the desperation for jobs led to the South in many ways becoming the original model for outsourcing. They offered a cheap workforce, and for decades textile mills and other manufacturing moved in a steady stream across the Mason-Dixon from the North, often driven by the South's willingness to institutionalize a non-union workforce and look the other way on regulation. It's a model that would haunt them later when manufacturing would leave the South for much the same reasons for first Mexico, then eventually overseas to Asia and now especially China.
The Dish 