Cotton States

“ But, much cotton is produced in the cotton States, and by the labour of somebody; much cotton is sold and somebody must be paid for it; there are rich people; there are good markets; there is hospitality, refinement, virtue, courage, and urbanity at the South. ”

“ At least five hundred white men told me something of their own lives and fortunes, across their own tables, and with the means of measuring the weight of their words before my eyes; and I know that white men seldom want an abundance of coarse food in the cotton States: the proportion of the free white men who live as well in any respect as our working classes at the North, on an average, is small, and the citizens of the cotton States, as a whole, are poor. ”

“ While, sir, the spleen of hostility towards the Government is gratified, while the manufacturing establishments of the East are promoted, while the middle section of the Union disposes of, at high prices, the abundant harvest of their fields, what becomes of the commerce of our country? What fate befalls the agriculture of the South? Our cotton rots on the stalk. From this proscription of foreign manufactures, the grower of the raw material is irretrievably ruined. ”

“ The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world's cotton market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound, 81⁄2d. ”

“ Will gentlemen be surprised when I tell them, South Carolina is interested, by the suspension of our trade, in the article of cotton alone, to an amount greater than the whole revenue of the United States? We do make a sacrifice, sir; I wish it could be consummated. I should rejoice to see this day all our surplus cotton, rice, flour and tobacco burnt. Much better would it be to destroy it ourselves, than to pay a tribute on it to any foreign power. Such a national offering, caused by the cupidity and oppression of Great Britain, would convince her she could not humble the spirit of freemen. ”

“ Nevertheless, in all the cotton climate of the United States, if a white farmer has made money without slaves, it will be found that it has been, in most cases, obtained exclusively from the sale of cotton. If cotton is a plant the cultivation of which by free or white labour is especially difficult, how is it that, with the additional embarrassments arising from a lack of capital, his gains are almost exclusively derived from his cotton crop? ”

“ The majority of the white population habitually makes use of no foreign production except chickory, which, ground with peas, they call coffee. I have never seen reason to believe that with absolute free trade the cotton States would take a tenth part of the value of our present importations. And as far as I can judge from observation of the comparative use of foreign goods at the South and at the North, not a tenth part of our duties have been defrayed by the South in the last twenty years. ”

“ Cotton, he said, had not been higher for many years, and as a great many persons, especially young men, were moving off to the new purchase in Georgia, prime hands were in high demand, for the purpose of clearing the land in the new country—that the boys and girls, under twenty, would bring almost any price at present, in Columbia, for the purpose of picking the growing crop of cotton, which promised to be very heavy; and as most persons had planted more than their hands would be able to pick, young niggers, who would soon learn to pick cotton, were prime articles in the market. ”

“ This does not apply to the border States; but before closing these letters, I will prove conclusively, by the census and other statistics, what, from long residence in the South, and from having traversed every Southern State, I know to be true, that cotton is now raised there most extensively and profitably by non-slaveholders, and upon farms using exclusively white labor. Indeed the cotton raised on small farms in the South where there are no slaves and exclusively by free white labor, commands a price from five to ten per cent. greater than the slave grown cotton. ”

“ This theory has been denied by some writers, and, in experience, is certainly subject to some marked exceptions; but undoubtedly it is the creed of the Cotton dynasty, and must here, therefore, be taken for true. [A] With this theory, the Southern States are under a direct inducement, in the nature of a bribe, to the amount of the annual profit on their cotton-crop, to see as many perfections and as few imperfections as possible in the system of African slavery, and to follow it out unflinchingly into all its logical necessities. ”

“ Yet I doubt not that the conspirators themselves, trust at this moment, as they ever have trusted, even less to the supposed helpless condition of the government than to the supposed advantages of the cotton monopoly to the Slave States, and to the supposed superiority of a community of privileged classes over an actual democracy.
“No! you dare not make war upon cotton; no power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king; until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws, as usual, the fall before the last, on the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. ”

“ And as to what are commonly called the Cotton States, if we assume that cotton cultivation is profitable only where the production is equal to two bales for each slave employed, it will be seen that wherever the land will not yield as much as this, the owner of it suffers all the disadvantages of the difficulty of getting good labourers as much as the owner of the land which produces seven or ten bales to the hand, although none of the profits of supplying the cotton demand, which gives this extraordinary price to labour, come to him. ”

“ Let England extricate herself from this awful dilemma. If the Cotton crops fail in the United States by any means whatever, let it be their own failure, and not England's; but now such a failure would affect England as well as America! Let Britain become self-supporting respecting Cotton, by cultivating free-labour Cotton; besides, she would free the Slaves thus engaged in the cultivation of this article. To emancipate one million would be a death-blow to the entire system. ”

“ Cotton grown from seed carried from any of the Atlantic Cotton States into Mississippi or Arkansas will continue to improve from like soils, whereas cotton grown from Texas seed in Georgia or South Carolina will continue, after the first crop, to deteriorate. ”

“ Fact was, it took thirteen months to make a good crop of cotton. One hand, they supposed, ought to work twenty acres; ten in cotton, and as many more in corn. Others tried to work twenty-five acres with one hand, but they didn’t do it very well. They only plowed three to four inches deep, and were sure that if they stirred up the ground deeper than that, it would be too loose for the cotton to take a firm root!
But free niggers could never be depended upon for such continuous and arduous work. The abolition of slavery was the death-blow to the great cotton interest of the United States. ”

“ The natives carry on a considerable trade with the adjoining states, and some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee to the Mississippi, and down that river to New Orleans. Orchards are common—cheese, butter, &c. plenty—houses of entertainment are kept by natives. Cotton and woollen cloths are manufactured in the nation, and almost every family grows cotton for its own consumption. Agricultural pursuits engage the chief attention of the nation—different branches of mechanics are pursued. Schools are increasing every year, and education is encouraged and rewarded. ”

“ I say all sorts of human service. What the South will have to pay for the service of true statesmanship, the world has now to see.
Whither the profits of cotton go, it is not my purpose, here, to undertake to show. I will barely notice the hypocritical statement made for the English market as an apology for this mad crime of the slaveholders, that they are greatly absorbed in contributions made by the planting States to our national treasury in payment of duties on importations. [Pg 27] The cotton-planters pay duties only on what they consume of foreign goods. ”

“ Let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O'Groats. The lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any kind of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms; two thousand thousand mouths would starve, for lack of food to feed them. ”

“ The planters and their families having fled precipitately, the United States Government found itself in possession of almost everything that had been theirs, the two chief items being the largest cotton crop ever yet raised there, nearly ready for exporting, and several hundred demoralized, destitute slaves, the number of whom was daily being increased by refugees and returned fugitives. The negroes were plainly a burdensome problem, the cotton a valuable piece of property. ”

“ Elsewhere I have spoken of the region bordering the lower portion of the Great River of the West, which includes Louisiana and Mississippi. In the former State, sugar and cotton are the great products. In the latter, cotton is the chief object of attention. It is quite probable that the change from slavery to freedom may necessitate the division of the large plantations into farms of suitable size for cultivation by persons of moderate capital. If this should be done, there will be a great demand for Northern immigrants, and the commerce of these States will be largely increased. ”

“ The United States having made unsuccessful attempts to produce cotton in the early days of the colonies, first became an important producing country toward the end of the eighteenth century. American Upland cotton, by reason of its comparatively short staple, and the unevenness of the fibers, as well as the difficulty of detaching it from the seed, was decidedly inferior to some other accessible species. ”

“ The interests of the owners of all soil in the Slave States which is not adapted to cotton culture, and of all capital not engaged in cotton culture, or in supplying slaves for it, are thus injured by the demand for cotton, they being, in fact, forced to be co-partners in an association in which they do not share the profits. ”

“ But I believe that the reign of Cotton is to be short-lived. Improvements in the arts give confident promise that some new textile substance will soon be discovered which will supersede this slave-made and slave-making material. Even should this hope fail, every body sees what an unnatural attitude of power and strength the cotton-producing states now occupy. Extending over only a small area of territory, which you can cover on the map with your hand, they raise [Pg 531] a staple which clothes, more or less, a great part of the world ”

“ There are usually other advantages for the cultivation, cleaning, pressing, shipping, and disposing of cotton, by the aid of which the owner obtains a fair return for the capital invested, and may be supposed to live, if he knows how, in a moderately comfortable way. The whole number of slaveholders of this large class in all the Slave States is, according to De Bow’s Compendium of the Census, 7,929, among which are all the great sugar, rice, and tobacco-planters. Less than seven thousand, certainly, are cotton-planters. ”

“ Mary asked.
"The bulk of our cotton is long-stapled and is called Georgian Upland," was the response. "The whole plant is rough and hairy—leaf, branch, and pod. Some persons think that originally it came from Mexico. However that may be, here it is, and although we raise some little of other sorts we have far more of this than anything else. We can thank it, too, for much of the wealth of this country of ours for Texas, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas are all big cotton-growing States. ”

“ No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State; no preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another. He said, the negotiators of the Treaty, in the 12th article, had laid a prohibition on the exportation of cotton to any part of the world, except in British vessels—cotton, the growth of our own soil, an important staple in the two Southern States, particularly in the one he had the honor to represent. ”

“ The planters have agreed among themselves to hold over one half of their cotton crop for their own purposes and for the culture of their fields, and to sell the other to the government. For each bale of cotton, as I hear, a bond will be issued on the fair average price of cotton in the market, and this bond must be taken at par as a circulating medium within the limits of the slave states. ”

“ There are exceptional, malarious and pestilential regions but in the largest part of the present Cotton producing region of the United States the labor of men of the English or Teutonic races will produce more cotton, man for man, in a life time, than of those of the African race. ”