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Put yourself in the shoes of the average Southerner on the cusp of the war. You’re not a rich planter, but you’re well to do. The South had highest per capita wealth of anywhere in the country at the time. Your economy is predicated on growing cash crops to sell to Europe, much the same way Dubai’s economy is predicated on selling oil. Your living in some shape or form is tied to agriculture. Without it, you’re going to lose your high standard of living.
You’re living in a country that has increasingly becoming more hostile to your agrarian way of life. You think your relationship with the North has become abusive, yet you have little political means to improve the relationship. The North is rapidly industrializing. Millions of immigrants are flooding to the North to work in their factories and mills. Their being made citizens and their children are citizens. They are voting against you because they want more factories and jobs. They want to bring their relatives to America, and they need jobs for the children they are making. Every year that passes, the Congress is being more pro-North. Your South can’t keep up with the population growth because you’re already growing cotton and tobacco everywhere it can grow. You want to expand your economy to West, but you’re being blocked politically and by geography. You’re losing your influence in the Senate because the North is still adding free states. You’ve effectively lost all 3 branches of government in perpetuity.
You have little incentive to industrialize because that will throw away your high standard of living. You’d have to flood the South with immigrants who would only be resentful of your wealth, and vote for the same things their northern cousins want. You don’t need to industrialize. You’re selling your cash crops to the cheapest and most high-quality manufacturer in the world. The same merchant ships that haul the cotton to Europe return with almost every manufactured product you consume. It’s a highly profitable, highly efficient trade network for you and your English counterparts. You’re not just receiving luxury goods. It’s cookware, farm equipment, rail irons, medical instruments, guns, tools, spare parts, clothing, plows, clocks, dinner plates, glassware, everything. That trade is vital to all sectors of your economy, and all ways of life.
Now the Yankee is openly threatening your way of life. They want to end slavery immediately. You don’t own slaves. Not on any moral grounds, but because they are too expensive. You do understand and accept the importance of slavery in your society. Unless you phase slavery out carefully the plantation system will collapse. If the plantation system collapses it destroys your wealth. It severs that immensely profitable lifeline to Europe. It wipes out all the cottage industries that sprang up to support it. You can’t just turn blacks into sharecroppers. They don’t have the capital, knowledge, or support system in place to produce at the same level. Plantations work as well as they do because of central planning, economies of scale, and centralization. What’s worse is that wealthy Yankees are trying to stoke a slave rebellion, and their newspapers are singing the praises of men that want to see you dead.
Not only that, but the North is starting to utilize its political advantages to extract wealth directly from you. They pass tariffs on foreign trade to force you to buy their more expensive and often inferior products. There’s no ready made trade network in place so they charge more for shipping on Yankee ships and railroads. Overnight, your cost of living just greatly increased. You’re either going to have to buy more expensive, Yankee-made goods or pay 30% more for the English ones you prefer.
You’re angry, but you don’t see a way to fix this in current system. You come to the reasonable conclusion that there’s only one way out, and that’s succession.
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