Why did the South lag behind the North in manufacturing during the Civil War?

Manufacturing had always taken
a back seat in the South. The northern colonies and later states did not have the
climate and soil for vast commercial farming, and so had always been a society of small farms
and towns with more manufactories than the South. The North needed grain from the Mid-Atlantic
region, which needed the business of the North for it's grain production, but the South was
self-sustaining in food production. The big business of the South was tobacco farming until the
invention of the cotton gin, and then cotton became an economically viable mass
product.

The real problem for the South was the manpower
problem of mass cash crop farming in the 19th century, in other words, slavery.
But since slaves were not machines they had to be fed, clothed, housed and otherwise taken care
of. They were expensive to buy and expensive to maintain, and as human beings could not be
simply treated as farm machinery. Plus large Southern farmers and plantation owners were always
in debt to banks in the North for funds for the next year's farming. Capital was
simply not available for investment in large manufacturing concerns.

Complicating this was the fact that Southerners preferred to buy manufactured goods
from Europe, whose quality was higher than American made articles, and whose cost was lower.
Unfortunately, the import tariffs on such goods were so high that the cost became much higher
than Northern goods, and so Southerners were essentially forced by protectionist legislation to
support the economy of the North.  This funded the increasing manufacturing capability of the
North, as did the monies flowing into Northern banks from the South. This, plus the fact that
eighty percent of America's income derived from export duties on Southern agricultural products,
crippled the South's manufacturing ability and was the real cause of the Civil
War.