Obviously, Southern economic growth was in the different direction from northern. There were few large cities in the South, which were mainly centers for gathering and shipping cotton. New Orleans was the only city of significant size in the South. The region produced less than 10 percent of the nation 's manufactured goods. Plain Folk of the Old South included three-fourths of white southerners who did not own slaves. Most white southerners lived on self-sufficient farms. Most whites supported slavery. A few, like Andrew Johnson and Joseph Brown, spoke out against the planter elite. Most white southerners supported the planter elite and slavery because of shared bonds of regional loyalty, racism, and kinship ties.
Although by 1820 slavery