King Cotton - History

History

The South has long, hot summers, and rich soils in river valleys—ideal conditions to grow cotton. The drawback of growing cotton was mainly the time spent processing the crop after harvest. Following invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, cotton production surpassed that of tobacco in the South and became the dominant cash crop. At the time of the American Civil War, Southern plantations generated 75% of the world's cotton supply.

The insatiable European demand for cotton was a result of the Industrial Revolution. In Great Britain, a series of inventions resulted in the mechanized spinning and weaving of cloth in the world’s first factories in the north of England. The ability of these factories to produce unprecedented amounts of cotton cloth revolutionized the world economy, but Great Britain needed raw cotton.

British textile manufacturers were eager to buy all the cotton that the South could produce. Cotton-bale production supports this conclusion: from 720,000 bales in 1830, to 2.85 million bales in 1850, to nearly 5 million in 1860. Cotton production renewed the need for slavery after the tobacco market declined in the late 18th century. The more cotton grown, the more slaves were needed to keep up with the demand for cotton.

By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a year.

Cotton's central place in the national economy and its international importance led Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina to make a famous boast in 1858:

Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet... What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?... England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King.

Southerners thought their survival depended on the sympathy of Europe to offset the power of the Union. They believed that cotton was so essential to Europe that they would intervene in any civil war.