Reddit reviews The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders

> They weren't dependent on their slaves nor did they realize significant gains from owning slaves. Most people who owned slaves did not have many resources

These claims are untrue. Slavery was the source of economic wellbeing for most Southerners, at least all successful ones. You can find many Historians who argue that Slavery under-girdled the Southern way of life, both economically and socially. The South's only real export to the rest of the country was cotton. Cotton output was directly connected with the size of one's slaveholding and how well one controlled the slaves.

> Had production been able to thrive in the south, prices would go up as well as costs decreasing as transportation, the largest cost of a good, was virtually eliminated.

Production did thrive in the South. The Cotton Gin leveled the slaveholding class and allowed any white southern man to produce cotton and sell it to traders going up the Mississippi or to anywhere else in the country. As I stated in my prior post slavery was the path to economic wellbeing. The South had no other valuable exports and thus southerners had no other way to make money besides owning slaves.

> Instead of owning slaves which aren't a really good investment as they require food and they die, the slaveholder class would transition to renting land to sharecroppers.

Slaves were tremendous investments which is why it was very rare for Slaveowners to kill their slaves. Most major landowners in the South acquired their land as a result of the economic wellbeing their slaves afforded them. I don't know much about white sharecropping in the pre civilwar South, but I'd venture to say that it was directly tied to Slavery. That without slaves there would be no one to till the land! Thus the North's requirement that the South get rid of Slavery would be unthinkable.

> Slaves were already taken care of better than factory workers in the north.

That's a very controversial claim. One that I think most historians would contest.

> Cultural differences wouldn't lead to a war on the scale of the civil war

No, but they played a part in it.

> in fact most people in the south, and people in the north would have no interaction and very little knowledge of each others' cultural at all.

Again, this claim is simply untrue. By the mid 1800s with railroads sprouting up across the Midwest, North, and parts of the South the country was becoming very connected and interdependent economically. The shipping lanes from the South to the North were incredibly busy. Also if you read a book like Uncle Toms Cabin it's pretty hard to say that Northerners didn't know much about Southern way of life as Stowe portrayed Slaveholders quite accurately.


I suggest reading a few books on the topic such as The Ruling Race And if you like Historical Fiction, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I don't know if we disagree much though. The Civil War was fought for economic reasons but those economic reasons were inexorably linked with Slavery and the culture that allowed it to flourish.