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> the wealthy landowners were facing the extinction of their wealth... so they started a war

As someone who doesn't know much about American history: What happened to the wealth of those Southern landowners after the war? Did they get to keep it?

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Some of it. Many of those who survived lost a good portion of their capital. But they kept title to their land, and used that leverage, voting power, and racist solidarity over time to claw back much of what they had previously enjoyed from exploitation of the emancipated slaves.

The South was still devastated by the war. But being largely agrarian to begin with, loss of capital wasn't quite as hard a blow as losing a factory.

Much of the "wealth" was the people they enslaved, so they did not get to keep it. The American Civil War is seen as a huge and enduring economic loss (but moral gain) for the southern states.

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