Southern Commercial Conventions
SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONVENTIONS
SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONVENTIONS were convocations in the mid-nineteenth century intended to promote the economic development of the South. The most notable gatherings were the sessions of the so-called Southern Commercial Convention, which met between December 1852 and May 1859. The South was not keeping pace with the North in either population or economic development, which gave the free states an advantage in the struggle over slavery. Although the earlier convention sessions were representative of all of the South and all shades of opinion, as the convention failed to produce results, moderate men ceased to attend. Secessionists of the Lower South came to dominate the sessions and promoted Southern sectionalism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Johnson, Vicki Vaugh. The Men and the Vision of the Southern Commercial Conventions, 1845–1871. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992.
AngelaEllis
See alsoSectionalism ; South, the: The Antebellum South ; Southern Rights Movement .