Southern cotton-growers (the 'Plantocracy') and their local politicians.

Life in the south was pure slavery for African Americans and if they tried to escape they'd be tortured like this answer

Leader of the rebel states (or the Confederacy) was Jefferson Davis, a symbolic figure of the 'Plantocracy', who was felt to embody the Confederate virtues of military distinction and feudal honour.

He proved a disappointment, unable to control either his Generals or his cabinet.

Pierce Butler was a member of the Southern plantocracy, which was a wealthy elite class of plantation owners in the antebellum South. He was considered to be at the top of the social hierarchy due to his immense wealth and influence.

The South had its one big product, cotton, which depended on slave labour. Southerners felt comfortable with that, and did not want the intrusion of factories, which would require mobile sklled labour, and destroy the feudal life of the plantocracy.

The North was industrialising fast, and absorbing many immigrants from industrial communities abroad,who could lend their skills and experience. Factory-bosses had no use for slave-labour.