Wealthy Southerners

[Anonymous]

I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

+1, and I'm a southerner from the very deep south. We do ourselves no favors if we still can't admit how wrong our part of the country has been in so many ways. It's not just the south, or course, but for God's sake let's stop revising history yet again. My family has been in the south since the late 18th century. I have no evidence my ancestors were slaveowners or KKK members, but I have little evidence to suggest they were abolitionists and civil rights activists either. It's immoral to pretend like my upper middle class white southern self hasn't benefited from extreme white privilege going back generations. It's an uncomfortable legacy, but confronting it is the only way to move forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Ok, even if true, and I'm not totally sold on that, the white/black caste system in the south made it much easier for whites to buy/own land and generally succeed than their black neighbors. Maybe not on the backs of slaves. But, at a much better advantage than black americans. So, don't congratulate yourself (the collective you) at your families self-made wealth. Even if they worked hard for it, they had significant advantages that tilted things in their favor.

You're addressing my response with this. Nobody's arguing with it. It's the notion that everyone's trust fund in the south is slavery money that is the problem. All of that went poof in 1865. I don't have data, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's northern trust funds tied to it though. We'd need a whole new thread....

No, it did not. And if you're going to make such an outlandish, uneducated opinion, you need to source it.I like how you do the southern deb thing of trying sweetly to imply it was those damn Yankees that stole your granddaddy's family fortune. Get a book and learn: the entire US economy - North and South - benefited enormously from the unpaid, enforced labor of Africans and their descendants.

I'm sorry you need a "source," but I will offer the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865. It formally ended slavery and with it the value of wealth held in slaves. Hence, "poof."

And I haven't seen a post in this thread about yankees, damned or otherwise, stealing anything. Maybe I missed it.

You're sorry I requested a source, because you're wrong and you don't have one. As has been pointed out several times, Jim Crow laws functionally kept slavery humming for several more decades. And when I ask for evidence of "poof," by the way, I am asking for proof that the money just up and disappeared. You seem content to imply that Northerners mysteriously ended up with all the money, which, if it all went "poof" with Emancipation, how did they get the money? Were slaves just deposited in Northern bank accounts? Do you see how your myths don't make sense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

+1, and I'm a southerner from the very deep south. We do ourselves no favors if we still can't admit how wrong our part of the country has been in so many ways. It's not just the south, or course, but for God's sake let's stop revising history yet again. My family has been in the south since the late 18th century. I have no evidence my ancestors were slaveowners or KKK members, but I have little evidence to suggest they were abolitionists and civil rights activists either. It's immoral to pretend like my upper middle class white southern self hasn't benefited from extreme white privilege going back generations. It's an uncomfortable legacy, but confronting it is the only way to move forward.

Thank you for admitting this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

+1, and I'm a southerner from the very deep south. We do ourselves no favors if we still can't admit how wrong our part of the country has been in so many ways. It's not just the south, or course, but for God's sake let's stop revising history yet again. My family has been in the south since the late 18th century. I have no evidence my ancestors were slaveowners or KKK members, but I have little evidence to suggest they were abolitionists and civil rights activists either. It's immoral to pretend like my upper middle class white southern self hasn't benefited from extreme white privilege going back generations. It's an uncomfortable legacy, but confronting it is the only way to move forward.

I'm also from the deep South, and this is absolutely spot-on.

[Anonymous]

You're sorry I requested a source, because you're wrong and you don't have one. As has been pointed out several times, Jim Crow laws functionally kept slavery humming for several more decades. And when I ask for evidence of "poof," by the way, I am asking for proof that the money just up and disappeared. You seem content to imply that Northerners mysteriously ended up with all the money, which, if it all went "poof" with Emancipation, how did they get the money? Were slaves just deposited in Northern bank accounts? Do you see how your myths don't make sense?

You clearly have little to no understanding of how the antebellum economy functioned, so let me try and get it through to you in a DCUM soundbite. As explained above, the value of slaves represented the overwhelming majority of the net worth of wealthy families in the south. And remember, that is what this thread is about, money in the south.

Now, to use your words, that "the money just up and disappeared" is in fact a brilliant and very accurate assesment of what happened. "The money" in fact up and walked off the plantations in 1865.

Further, the antebellum economy was greased by a credit system based upon predictable agricultural cash flows. That system collapsed with the confederacy. When there is no available credit, the value of real estate collapses, which is exactly what happened.

The reference to surviving northern money as it relates to slavery relates to fortunes made in the trafficking in and financing of slaves and products produced by slaves, rather than direct day-to-day ownership of slaves. That wealth largely survived emancipation and may well be floating around in modern family trust funds. I don't have data for you on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You're sorry I requested a source, because you're wrong and you don't have one. As has been pointed out several times, Jim Crow laws functionally kept slavery humming for several more decades. And when I ask for evidence of "poof," by the way, I am asking for proof that the money just up and disappeared. You seem content to imply that Northerners mysteriously ended up with all the money, which, if it all went "poof" with Emancipation, how did they get the money? Were slaves just deposited in Northern bank accounts? Do you see how your myths don't make sense?

You clearly have little to no understanding of how the antebellum economy functioned, so let me try and get it through to you in a DCUM soundbite. As explained above, the value of slaves represented the overwhelming majority of the net worth of wealthy families in the south. And remember, that is what this thread is about, money in the south.

Now, to use your words, that "the money just up and disappeared" is in fact a brilliant and very accurate assesment of what happened. "The money" in fact up and walked off the plantations in 1865.

Further, the antebellum economy was greased by a credit system based upon predictable agricultural cash flows. That system collapsed with the confederacy. When there is no available credit, the value of real estate collapses, which is exactly what happened.

The reference to surviving northern money as it relates to slavery relates to fortunes made in the trafficking in and financing of slaves and products produced by slaves, rather than direct day-to-day ownership of slaves. That wealth largely survived emancipation and may well be floating around in modern family trust funds. I don't have data for you on this.

"The money" didn't leave the plantations. The free labor continued in the form of sharecropping, most of whom were former slaves who continued to live on plantations.

No one is saying the money came from real estate. The money came from what was grown on the real estate and the extremely cheap labor costs of those doing the growing.

You don't have a source because that's a crock of bs.

http://www.newsweek.com/book-american-slavery-continued-until-1941-93231

[Anonymous]

Oh, actually you are (partly) right about that last point, I misread what you were saying. Both the north and the south benefited from slave labor.

[Anonymous]

You know there were lots of white sharecroppers too, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You're sorry I requested a source, because you're wrong and you don't have one. As has been pointed out several times, Jim Crow laws functionally kept slavery humming for several more decades. And when I ask for evidence of "poof," by the way, I am asking for proof that the money just up and disappeared. You seem content to imply that Northerners mysteriously ended up with all the money, which, if it all went "poof" with Emancipation, how did they get the money? Were slaves just deposited in Northern bank accounts? Do you see how your myths don't make sense?

You clearly have little to no understanding of how the antebellum economy functioned, so let me try and get it through to you in a DCUM soundbite. As explained above, the value of slaves represented the overwhelming majority of the net worth of wealthy families in the south. And remember, that is what this thread is about, money in the south.

Now, to use your words, that "the money just up and disappeared" is in fact a brilliant and very accurate assesment of what happened. "The money" in fact up and walked off the plantations in 1865.

Further, the antebellum economy was greased by a credit system based upon predictable agricultural cash flows. That system collapsed with the confederacy. When there is no available credit, the value of real estate collapses, which is exactly what happened.

The reference to surviving northern money as it relates to slavery relates to fortunes made in the trafficking in and financing of slaves and products produced by slaves, rather than direct day-to-day ownership of slaves. That wealth largely survived emancipation and may well be floating around in modern family trust funds. I don't have data for you on this.

"The money" didn't leave the plantations. The free labor continued in the form of sharecropping, most of whom were former slaves who continued to live on plantations.

No one is saying the money came from real estate. The money came from what was grown on the real estate and the extremely cheap labor costs of those doing the growing.

You don't have a source because that's a crock of bs.

http://www.newsweek.com/book-american-slavery-continued-until-1941-93231

South hating PP, you are a big idiot. The price of cotton dropped significantly in the 1870s, along with former slave running away in droves. Can you not see why this would lead to the ruination of plantation owners

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know lots of extremely wealthy Southerners but none whose wealth dates back to the Civil War. Everyone was dirt poor during the Depression. Most wealth I know started accumulating just two generations ago (George Bush Sr's generation). Timber and oil- and they had nothing to do with slaves or

Prestige and "class" in the South has more to do with your family's social status than wealth. And I regularly hear southerners refer to "old money" that is just 2-3 generations old.

Is that the new southern myth they're telling down there now? That lie, along with "this confederate flag just represents my (treasonous) heritage" needs to die a quick painful death. You can say whatever you want, but intelligent people who know history are well aware of where old southern money comes from. I'm simply not interested in hearing revisionist history about the origins of stolen southern wealth. The south was, and tends to remain, on the wrong side of justice. You are an apologist.

+1, and I'm a southerner from the very deep south. We do ourselves no favors if we still can't admit how wrong our part of the country has been in so many ways. It's not just the south, or course, but for God's sake let's stop revising history yet again. My family has been in the south since the late 18th century. I have no evidence my ancestors were slaveowners or KKK members, but I have little evidence to suggest they were abolitionists and civil rights activists either. It's immoral to pretend like my upper middle class white southern self hasn't benefited from extreme white privilege going back generations. It's an uncomfortable legacy, but confronting it is the only way to move forward.

Thank you for admitting this.

I agree with the above bold quote but the first poster does have a point in the not all (or even most) of wealthy southerners have antebellum wealth. Those I know all acquired wealth through the oil industry which came much later.

[Anonymous]

DD has received admission to some Southern schools that have these types of demographics, and reading this thread is a little disheartening. But it will be good for her to learn discernment and how to tolerate all kinds of people while still being herself, if anything. We're still waiting on scholarship and financial aid info to decide on where we'll send her.

Does anyone know if SMU has changed since this thread was started?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Haha. Sweetie. We're a whole different breed than your billionaire prep school friends. An older and harder to crack breed.

Thanks for the laugh! Not sure that you meant to be funny, but thanks for the laugh, nonetheless.

[Anonymous]

The original question of this thread (from 2015!!) seems to be whether southern wealth can ever compare to the type of wealth found in NYC prep schools, and the answer is yes. Wealth is not limited to NYC. Is this that hard to understand?