Same Place, Different Party
This can't wait, so I have to post it now. Different guy, this time.
Guy at Party: The majority of people in the South were not slave-owners.
Me (nodding): Of course.
Guy at Party (continuing): They were mostly middle-class.
I was polite in my response, but honestly, I don't know where people get this shit. No real banks, a quarter of your population in chains, almost no entrepreneurs, domination of both land and workforce by agricultural oligarchies, not to mention the almost total absence of manufacturing. Sure, I granted a few merchants on the coast, but I had to make clear that the South's rebellion was horribly doomed, probably from the beginning. It didn't even form a complete economic system, let alone a state. War between the States, my ass. That suggests some equivalence that never existed. As I told my friends' friend, the South did have a middle-class--it just happened to live in the North.
Guy at Party: The majority of people in the South were not slave-owners.
Me (nodding): Of course.
Guy at Party (continuing): They were mostly middle-class.
I was polite in my response, but honestly, I don't know where people get this shit. No real banks, a quarter of your population in chains, almost no entrepreneurs, domination of both land and workforce by agricultural oligarchies, not to mention the almost total absence of manufacturing. Sure, I granted a few merchants on the coast, but I had to make clear that the South's rebellion was horribly doomed, probably from the beginning. It didn't even form a complete economic system, let alone a state. War between the States, my ass. That suggests some equivalence that never existed. As I told my friends' friend, the South did have a middle-class--it just happened to live in the North.