Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power

40 acres and a mule would be at least $6.4 trillion today: what the US really owes Black America

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To meet the need, wealthy planters turned to slave traders, who imported ever more human chattel to the colonies, the vast majority from West Africa. These open markets where humans were inspected like animals and bought and sold to the highest bidder proved an increasingly lucrative enterprise. In the 17th century, slaves would fetch between five and ten dollars. Slave auction circa Slave labor had become so entrenched in the Southern economy that nothing—not even the belief that all men were created equal—would dislodge it.

When the topic of slavery arose during the deliberations over calculating political representation in Congress, the southern states of Georgia and the Carolinas demanded that each slave be counted along with whites. The northern states balked, saying it gave southern states an unfair advantage. Their compromise? Delegates agreed that each slave would count as three-fifths of a person, giving the South more representation, and that the slave trade would be banned 20 years hence, in , a concession to Northern states that had abolished slavery several years earlier.

By the end of the century, Britain was importing more than 20 million pounds of tobacco per year. But after the colonies won independence, Britain no longer favored American products and considered tobacco a competitor to crops produced elsewhere in the empire.

But even as tobacco waned in importance, another cash crop showed promise: cotton. Slaves on an American plantation operating a cotton gin. Picking and cleaning cotton involved a labor-intensive process that slowed production and limited supply. In , inventor Eli Whitney devised a machine that combed the cotton bolls free of their seeds in very short order.

Manually, one slave could pick the seeds out of 10 pounds of cotton in a day. The cotton gin could process pounds in the same time. There was an irony in all this. Many people believed the cotton gin would reduce the need for slaves because the machine could supplant human labor. But in reality, the increased processing capacity accelerated demand.

The more cotton processed, the more that could be exported to the mills of Great Britain and New England. And the invention of the cotton gin coincided with other developments that opened up large-scale global trade: Cargo ships were built bigger, better and easier to navigate. Powerful navies protected them against piracy. And newly invented steam engines powered these ships, as well as looms and weaving machines, which increased the capacity to produce cotton cloth. From Whitney's gin to the mechanical picker, Dattel shows just how close the links have been between King Cotton and the race issue.

This book is highly recommended.

Samenvatting

No one is better equipped to present that story than Gene Dattel, a superbly gifted writer, who also happens to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of this fascinating subject. This volume elevates to an important new level our comprehension and appreciation of a largely neglected chapter in our conflicted past. Winter, former governor of Mississippi Gene Dattel grew up in the Mississippi Delta, historically the center of cotton production in the United States, and a major target of voter registration workers in the s.

Thereafter he spent twenty years on Wall Street.

These experiences superbly position him to remind us, in overwhelmingly persuasive detail, that for almost a century and a half cotton was America's leading export; and that before, during, and after the Civil War, white America, North as well as South, endeavored to keep an African American labor force contained' in the cotton fields.

Thus cotton was the foundation of both the growth of the national economy and of racism in the United States. It should be read not just by history buffs but by all Americans who want to understand the events and forces that shaped and left their imprint on our country.

Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power

The book captures with great style and intensity the overwhelming influence of cotton and slavery on our economy, finances, social behavior, and political life. Cotton and slavery prevented the formation of a more perfect union in and as the author concludes America no longer needs cotton, but still bears cotton's human legacy.

Once I started to read it I was hooked. A landmark, combining a firm grasp of finance and its controlling impact on the pattern of rural life in cotton growing regions with human sympathy for both field hands and planters. A fascinating account of an essential aspect of American history. Gene Dattel brings clarity and insight to a subject we've long known about but not known well. A model for integrating economic, social, and political history-and a terrific read too. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas and author of The Money Men I am very impressed by the extensiveness of the research, the quality of the writing, and the vigor of the narrative.

Gene Dattel has produced an important book that shows how 'King Cotton' could, all too often, be a cruel tyrant. The book will be welcomed by both specialists and the general reader. Though exceptionally well versed in the economic history of cotton production, he never loses sight of the human suffering caused by slavery and its consequences.

5 Myths About Slavery

He also gives a first-class account of the politics of cotton. From the Constitution to the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, each of the key events in the history of the United States looks quite different when you understand the usually malign role King Cotton played.

Above all, it is informed, honest, and balanced. Dattel explains insightfully just how slavery and racial discrimination came to plague our nation's ideals and the promise of American life. Mostly it was a by-product-north and south, east and west-of trying to earn a buck, of pursuing the Almighty Dollar. His book is a gem-one of the finest works on the American national experience to appear in many years.

The book is full of sage judgments and fresh insights, eminently fair and unflinching in its critical assessments. He shows the power of finance and the search for profit in shaping American attitudes from the Constitutional Convention to contemporary issues of cotton's decline and the search for social justice for the people who worked the fields of this global crop. Dattel skillfully portrays the spaces of cotton's kingdom, from the Mississippi Delta fields to the board rooms of New York City's financial companies, and offers compelling evidence of the materialism that drove American life around cotton, often compromising the better angels of our nature.

The timing of the cotton gin in —six years after the ratification of the U.

Constitution—was unfortunate, in Dattel's telling. The Founding Fathers, sensing that slavery's days were numbered and oblivious to the coming Most users should sign in with their email address.

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