Slavery was one reason why the South was a society based on class. The rich had slaves to do all of their manual labor—this meant that they had little reason to hire other working-class people or poor whites to do things around the plantation. While this gave the rich leisure time to study in prestigious universities or run for public office, it also created a system where poor whites would nearly always stay poor unless they moved away from the South and traveled North for factory work or West for cheaper land. Poor whites also resented the slaves for taking their jobs, thus creating racism from all sides for the African Americans of the region. As cotton prices grew alongside worldwide demand for textiles, southern planters saw no reason to expand into industry or allow slaves to work on infrastructure projects which might help the South in the long-term. Slavery allowed a small group of people to control much of what happened politically in the South; unfortunately, these people led the South to secession and war.
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