Well, I don't have much of a response other than to say that you have explained your side well, but I personally interpret the history differently. There's one other thing from the Reactionary Enlightenment article though that I thought you might find interesting. Earlier, you mentioned a sort of "Con-Labor/Radical versus lib political alignment" and the concept of a "red tory" to explain why the Republican party at its founding included a mix of so-called conservatives and socialists. The Reactionary Enlightenment article mentions that dynamic as well, but reverses its application.
According to the author, the Northern abolitionists like Garrison were disciples of Locke and "traditional liberalism" who relied heavily on ideas like the doctrine of consent, while Fitzhugh and the Southern reactionaries ascribed to a form of "Tory socialism" dependent on a "divinely ordained 'controlling power.'" These "feudal socialists" lambasted the North for its "anarchy", while also "lashing out at Northern capitalism in the spirit of Disraeli and Carlyle."
He also agrees with you that the Southern reactionaries were ideologically bankrupt and mixed all sorts of contradictory and inconsistent strains of thought to try to justify slavery, but still thinks they deserve study instead of being forgotten as they have because they "dared to insist that life can be lived in an utterly different way from the way that Hamilton and Jefferson both agreed to live it."
Studied in the same way one should study Mein Kampf maybe, for the soul purpose of learning what to avoid in the future.
I have a difficult time accepting any narrative the incorporates a criticism of "Northern Capitalism" that then fails to account for the fact that Northern Capitalism was not lassiez Faire, but nationalist in its basis. This linkage between business interests (most of them) and protectionism would last for decades, but it is not just the protectionism. That is why it is important to consider Carey and the actual economic philosophy of Republicans under Lincoln especially.
They regarded themselves as working to overcome British economic dominance and they loathed their free trade economic model. They also blamed Britain and free trade for the South, for slavery and for the rebellion.
I also have a hard time seeing the planter class as being part of a red tory model when they don't believe in contemporary tory economic policy, post Peel anyway. Britain's economic policy derives from the dominance of the Liberal Party in this period. That is why it just sounds like so much Southern grasping to anything that might hold their weight, from falling into that abyss.
