ABSTRACT
The legacy of the old South may be slavery and lynching, but if there is one region of the United States where traditionalism thrived and capitalism and feudalism merged, it was the South. Southern planters became rich by producing cotton and selling it in capitalist markets to Northern and British factories. Despite the enormous wealth generated for elite planters, in the long run, the plantation system probably would not have been able to compete economically with Northern industry. Southern neo-aristocrats presented their plantations as harmonious communities, like romanticized feudal manors, where the slaves happily sang in the fields. Traditionalist white Southerners and their opponents, especially blacks, remember “Reconstruction” – the period when the Northern army occupied the South – very differently. While the Civil War was an overwhelming victory for the North and an utter defeat for the South, it is celebrated in the South far more than the North.
