The lack of Southern infrastructure can not simple be blamed on tariffs collected in Northern ports.. The South wanted their agrarian lifestyle. Though there was an industrial call from some, such as William Gregg who had established a large textile mill in South Carolina. He asked this very simple question "Have we not the raw material on the spot, thus saving the freight of transportation? Is not labor cheaper with us than with our Northern brethren?...Bring spindles to the cotton became a cry of Southern promoters. I mean with all that cotton the Textile industry would seem a most easy way to industrialization, they would not have had to import quite so much.... It never happen, though Cotton was King in the South, in 1860 the value of cotton textiles in the South was only 10 percent of the American total....not including household manufactures... 2/5 of all southern spindles were in states that grew very little cotton compared to the deep south. One town...Lowell Massachusetts... operated more spindles in 1860 than all eleven of what would soon be the Confederate States combined....one town... Northern firms did continue to monopolize the carrying trade of the South, selling goods to them and trading. In large part because the South had not much interest in doing so....Cotton was bringing them in a handsome price.

See Stephen J. Goldfarb's "A Note on Limits th the Growth of the Cotton-Textile Industry in the Old South...1982...