The economic situation as it existed over 30 years before Southern secession was well
summed up by Missouri Senator Thomas H. Benton speaking before Congress in 1828:
"Before the (American) revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as
hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the
Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has
exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of
dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would
indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact?....Under Federal legislation, the
exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue....Virginia, the
two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual
expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually
furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of
Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it
flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is
the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North.
Federal legislation does all this."—Missouri Senator Thomas H. Benton, 1828
