The American South skipped industrial manufacturing for New South service capitalism

Evidence

As Mandel describes in Late Capitalism, the American South, in the global economy prior to the Civil War, was not a region characterized by a capitalist mode of production (even if American capitalism inherently relied on this region for the totality of its economy). Slavery in the United States was, instead, a form of “pre-industrial capitalism” embodied in the plantation economy. After the Civil War, the South had to be “developed” and reintegrated into capitalism, without the development of manufacturing, realizing itself best in the industries associated with the “New South”: finance and banking, tourism, technology and research, and entertainment. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 329