Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South

In the aftermath of the Civil War, narratives about the American South downplayed industrial development in order to explain how the Confederacy lost the conflict. Even after the cliometric revolution of the 1970s, when historians re-examined the South's Antebellum manufacturing using statistical analysis, biases about the 'backwardness' of the region led scholars to find little to no industrial concerns in the area. In 'Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South', historian Michael Frawley uses exhaustive research from a wide variety of sources-- including the United States Census, which many historians used to gauge industry on the eve of the Civil War-- to show how industrial development in the region has been systematically under-represented. In light of this under-reporting, Frawley reconsiders factors related to industrial production in the post-war South, such as the availability of natural resources, transportation, markets, labor, and capital. He contends that the Gulf South was a region far more industrialized and modern than suggested by the census, by economic historians like Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, or by contemporary travel writers, such as Frederick Law Olmsted.