"It’s a popular narrative, but history doesn’t support it.
...Southerners also relied on connections in the North for imported goods.
The South became, economically if not formally, a kind of colonial dependency of the North.”That isn’t the description of strength that one would think would come from a region employing the “peculiar institution” that America supposedly was built upon.
Instead, it would appear that a region dependent upon enslaving others ended up enslaving itself to a free North.
...In 1860 the North had over 110,000 manufacturing establishments, the South just 18,000.
The North produced 94 percent of the country’s iron, 97 percent of is coal and – not incidentally – 97 percent of its firearms.
It contained 22,000 miles of railroad to the South’s 8,500.
The North outperformed the South agriculturally as well.
Northerners held 75 percent of the country’s farm acreage, produced 60 percent of its livestock, 67 percent of its corn, and 81 percent of its wheat.
All in all, they held 75 percent of the nation’s total wealth.”
That final statistic combined with the North’s victory in the Civil War should be sufficient to dispel the idea that America was built on slavery.
Keep in mind, too, that not all of the wealth in the South was generated by slaves.
Free men in the South also worked their own fields and industries.
The truth is, America was primarily built on the industry of free people.
Slavery was a terrible thing that went against the founding ideals of the country.
Nonetheless, we do not need to create false narratives to know it was wrong and to have sympathy for both those who lived through it and for those who carried the scars forward.
Indeed, it does damage to one’s cause to push a false narrative that cannot stand up under scrutiny and calls in to question any other statements one makes as well as the agenda for making them."
