feudal aristocrats

This is a bugbear of mine, but the South was not feudal. It was an alternative mode of capitalism based around slavery (which you’re right did come into conflict with the industrial capitalism of the North). Slaves and Slave owners didn’t have a relationship like serf and lord (which while bad and unbalanced, were meant to have responsibilities and rights flowing both ways). Slaves were commodities, like an oxen or a loom, to be used for generating profit yes, but also for being bought, sold, insured and speculated against.

As Frederick Douglass writes:

I appear this evening as a thief and robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and ran off with them.