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“But if you look at just Deep Cotton South white wealth compared to average Northern wealth, the disparity is striking. Including the value of their slaves, average Deep South whites had three times the wealth of average Northerners in states like Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.”

Have not read the book so can't comment except to say it looks interesting.

The summary was striking: some classes of people had three times the wealth of other classes before the South was destroyed. THREE TIMES! ! !

Couple that with the fact that Southerner George Washington was the Father of Our Country. And Southerner James Madison was the Father of the Constitution. And Southerner George Mason was the Father of the Bill of Rights. And Southerner Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence.

You start to see the basis of sectional jealousy and, perhaps, the reason Cain decided to slay Able.

Unrelated, does anyone know the wealth multiple of today's top elite class compared to lower economic classes in the U.S.?

Does the economic class of Forrest Mars, Phil Knight, Sheldon Anderson, Christy Walton, Sergey Brin, Michael Bloomberg, David Koch, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison have a wealth multiple of three times the lower economic classes, or more than three times?

And no, I'm not suggesting that anyone in the highest economic class has ever exploited overseas sweatshop labor. Nor am I suggesting that any of us consumers have ever benefited from buying Red Chinese goods made with sweatshop labor.

And I'm not pointing a finger at Bill Gates and his reported net worth of 79 billion dollars. He has worked many long, hard hours for his money - perhaps 16 hours a day for 40 years. If my math is correct, he has earned just $338,000 per hour all those years.

What I find striking is that at times in history, some classes of people have had THREE TIMES as much as others.

I guess that's supposed to be heavy sarcasm or something.

I note first that average net income in the richest states now is about double the average net income in the poorest states.

I haven't seen the data on average net wealth, but if the difference was greater in the 1850s than it is now, that's significant.

Maybe when slaves were taken into account the difference wasn't so great, but slaves weren't taken into account.

Secondly, if the wealth differential wasn't a big thing, that does a lot to discredit the idea that Northerners wanted war to take away that big pile of Southern money.

jeffersondem: "The summary was striking: some classes of people had three times the wealth of other classes before the South was destroyed. THREE TIMES! ! !"

But the South was never destroyed, and would never have been destroyed, ever, until Confederates first provoked, then started, declared and waged war against the United States, much of it in Union states.

jeffersondem: "What I find striking is that at times in history, some classes of people have had THREE TIMES as much as others."

And yet it was the wealthiest Southern states which started & declared war against those poorest Northern states.
It would be as if, to use your examples, Bill Gates and those others most wealthy you cited first declared themselves seceded, Confederated and then actual war against the poorer United States.

You seem to suggest that would be senseless, and I'd totally agree.