One Southerner says the Confederacy was a ‘con-job’ on white people — and its legacy still is today

[Hortensis]

7. In addition, wealthy Southerners who couldn't produce "middle class"

goods right on their plantations preferred to purchase them from Europe, especially France, so that the southern middle class was just a fraction the size of the middle class up north. Plus, very little money spilled out of the wealthy plantations to farmers eking out livings on whatever land the big planters didn't want.

This preference for foreign goods and the plantation culture's contempt for northern culture, with a desire to dissociate their finer selves from its crass industrialism, were other big reasons for secession that blew up big time when the north instituted tariffs on imports to try to get the South to "buy American" factory goods. The fact that most couldn't afford even cheaper American goods was not considered by many of them, and was of course totally irrelevant to the plantation owners.

You bet the confederacy was and is a con job -- BUT, even so it was mostly a self con, same as today. Abe Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in most states down here, but most of the majority who were not allowed to vote for or against him were very happy with that anyway.