Quotes about Southern Economy

Greg Grandin

Just as much as the United States mattered to cotton, cotton mattered to the United States. Cotton reinvigorated slavery, established the young nation's place in the global economy, and eventually helped create the political and economic conflicts that resulted in civil war.

Robert Dallek

A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country.

Clark Gable

Disagreeing with the fervent patriotism of the Confederates: "I think it's hard winning a war with words, gentlemen. . . . I'm saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we. . . . All we've got is cotton and slaves, and arrogance." "I seem to be spoiling everybody's brandy and cigars and dreams of victory."

B. B. King

Cotton was a force of nature. There's a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

Lyndon B. Johnson

We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it--to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.

Hezekiah Niles

The dearest interests of the Southern states are involved in the adoption of measures for the support and encouragement of free laboring whites.

Niles, a Southern editor was none the less anti-slavery. Other than the gross immorality of slavery, he saw that the economics of the institution actually inhibited the economic development of the South very early. Efficiency of machinery and organization of work and labor saving inventions were not as badly needed in a slave economy where human labor was so inexpensive. While in the North and most of Europe, there was skilled, but expensive, labor of freemen. This motivated all to improve processes and technology and increase productivity. There was much less motivation in the South and the slaves who actually understood the work had no way to experiment and were not allowed to read or write so the South was almost economically and technologically stagnant in comparison to the free labor states.

Andrew J. Polsky

The war against slavery was a war against the Southern economy.

Lawrence Massillon Keitt

African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism.

Reese Witherspoon

I traveled all over the South looking for factories - to keep production in the South. I wanted to give back to the place and people that raised me.

Southern Economy Quotes