Fatally flawed economic reasoning. Without relatively free slave labor, growth of cotton would have simply died out - it didn't take white jobs as whites wouldn't have continued the practice at any conceivable wage. (nor would blacks if not forced to or later with absolutely no other job possibilities). When he says 1/4 of blacks worked in lumber, manufacturing, construction, etc., those were undoubtedly the worst of the worst jobs that would have been too dangerous or ugly to be attractive to whites - and with typically half the sparse southern population white and heavy exports, the local economy likely sustained the white workforce rather easily.

Exports of cotton to the north almost certainly had trickle down benefits for non-slave owning whites. Unfortunately for the south, most of those treacle benefits accrued to northern whites who owned the textile mills and sold local, back to the south and exported to Europe. Still, there were certainly southern benefits to the economy - as he said, slavery made southern states the richest in the country (I'm a bit doubtful of that claim though) and that money would have gotten spent on local services more than just accrued in banks. Antebellum homes and goods flowing through Charleston harbor - a bustling economy, though certainly not as wealthy as the industrial north and more spread out, therefore QED fewer schools and lower education.

Land ownership was less in the south principally because of economies of scale needed for tobacco and then cotton. Large plantations would of course dominate the count, and the profitability of cotton made it much more attractive than smaller plots for wheat.

Sadly, another article that comes along with a reasonable assessment of modern times, and then tries to shoehorn history into supporting that notion, for whatever reason. He could have quit with "I found the flag a historical insult to blacks so I quit waving it". Perhaps an analogy to OWS/the 1% could be effectively made, but this one didn't do it.

[almost fell into the Groucho Marx line leaving a party, "I have had a wonderful evening... but this wasn't it." - one for grammar teachers I suppose]