Thanks for the engagement Billy. If Charleston is indeed a prosperous place today then I think that weakens the argument historian David Wilson was trying to make.

I argued that slavery had economic benefit to the US, but Wilson argued that it retarded economic progress. I have never been to Charleston, so I could not dispute the claims David Wilson made. I was simply willing to accept that he was right. It did not change my overall argument anyway which was that the slavery helped get the foreign cash needed to purchase machines and equipment for industrialization.

I am a little bit skeptical to your claim that the South was the breadbasket. To my knowledge one of the key reasons slavery did not expand to the North was that agriculture in the North was primiarily engaged in growing food. Food growing is not profitable enough according to Adam Smith to pay for slaves. The South could hold slaves because they grew cash crops like cotton and tobacco which could sell for a lot of money on the market.

But I will accept that the North benefitted a lot from the South. After all factories in the North needed the cotton grown in the South. They also benefitted from the exports from the South which enabled imports of things the North needed.

Btw I am not saying you are wrong about the agriculture. I would love to hear more. Maybe you have some sources. I just find it very surprising.