There is an ongoing myth that the South was rich because of slavery.

Actually, the opposite is true.

While plantations made plenty of money selling cotton

to Northern factories,

every product needed on those plantations came from the North.

So almost every dollar earned from slavery in the South

went to the North.

Both the North and South printed their own money.

But the Confederate dollars had no financial backing,

so inflation in the South was rampant.

During the Civil War, the rate of inflation in the South

rose by 9,000 percent.