Reply #31: Slavery and Capitalism [View All]

Your understanding of the Southern economy in the years prior to the Civil War is flawed. It might fit the South Carolina coastal areas and specific parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia during certain phases of their history, but on the whole the Southern economy was in no sense feudal.

The vast majority of Southern landowners during the three to four decades prior to the Civil War belonged to a class that we today would associate with the middle class. If they owned slaves, they owned half a dozen or less, their holdings were modest by comparison to the large, quasi-aristocratic plantation owners along the East coast, and their fortunes literally lived and died according to market forces. Further, as it pertains to feudalism, these types of landowners were in no sense lords of their land, subjected as they were to government imposed taxes, fees, and restrictions. Nor did a class of people exist that would be analogous to vassals.

That said, there were certainly those in the antebellum South who would have preferred such a relationship, but democratic impulses throughout the region kept that from taking root, except, as previously mentioned, in certain coastal areas.

OnEdit:

A couple suggestions:

_The Ruling Race_ by James Oakes describes the state of Southern society in the years leading up to the Civil War, including a detailed analysis of the average Southern agriculturalist, how he came into being, and what role he played in government and society.

_The People in Power_ by Ralph Wooster provides a detailed analysis of local Southern government and provides the basis of the argument that a quasi-middle-class controlled the South's political fortunes more concretely than the somewhat mythical Southern aristocracy. Wooster's volumes are the standard work on the subject and cited positively by every historian doing work in this area today.