Cotton!
Lots of money to be made in Cotton.
The South staked every thing on that one resource, believed that Europe couldn’t survive without it. The south was gambling that France & England would come to their rescue.
The South didn’t evolve into an industrial conglomerate like the North did, Agriculture and Cotton was their claim to fame. They didn’t like a centralized Government’s social experiment of ending slavery. You can cry “States Rights” all you want, they were going to keep slavery.
Kevin Dally