King Cotton

King Cotton was a slogan used by southerners (1860–61) to support secession from the United States by arguing cotton exports would make an independent Confederacy economically prosperous, and—more important—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy in the Civil War because their industrial economy depended on textiles derived from cotton. The slogan was successful in mobilizing support: by February 1861, the seven states whose economies were based on cotton plantations had all seceded and formed the Confederacy. However, the other eight slave states remained in the Union. To demonstrate their economic power southerners spontaneously refused to sell or ship out their cotton in early 1861; it was not a government decision. By summer 1861, the Union blockade shut down over 95% of exports. Since the Europeans had large stockpiles of cotton, they were not injured by the boycott—the value of their stockpiles went up. To intervene meant war with the U.S. and a cutoff of food supplies, so Britain did not intervene. Consequently, the strategy proved a failure for the Confederacy—King Cotton did not help the new nation.

Read more about King Cotton:  History, British Position, Economics

Famous quotes containing the words king and/or cotton:

    You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne.
    Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)

    The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
    Maya Angelou (b. 1928)