11 - The North–South Wage Gap before and after the Civil War

Summary

In the several decades preceding the Civil War the Southern economy grew at about the same pace as did the economy of the rest of the United States. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, per capita incomes fell sharply in the South, absolutely and relative to per capita incomes in the North. Although there was some recovery after the initial decline, Southern incomes remained persistently low relative to Northern incomes for the remainder of the nineteenth century – indeed, until well into the twentieth century. Measured in terms of per capita incomes, the impact of the Civil War on the Southern economy was both severe initially and protracted.

This chapter offers further assessment of the impact of the War on the Southern economy but in a way that has received relatively limited attention previously from economic historians. Specifically, I examine the evolution of wages in the South relative to the North, before and after the War. My analysis is based on wage evidence culled from various published and archival sources, reaching back into the ante-bellum period as early as the 1820s and extending (in some cases) to the end of the century.

There are several reasons why a study of the impact of the War on relative (South-to-North) wages is of value. One reason is that regional data on wages are available more frequently, in the temporal sense, than are estimates of per capita income.