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

by Gene Dattel

Overview

Since the earliest days of colonial America, the relationship between cotton and the African-American experience has been central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, blacks were assigned to the cotton fields while a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566637473
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	09/16/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Gene Dattel grew up in the cotton country of the Mississippi Delta and studied history at Yale and law at Vanderbilt. He then embarked on a twenty-year career in financial capital markets as a managing director at Salomon Brothers and at Morgan Stanley. A consultant to major financial institutions and to the Pentagon, he established a reputation as a foremost authority on Asian economies. His The Sun That Never Rose remains the definitive work on Japanese financial institutions in the 1980s. Mr. Dattel is now an independent scholar who lectures widely and has served as an adviser to the New York Historical Society and the B. B. King Museum. He lives in New York City. For more information, see http://genedattel.com.

Read an Excerpt

Cotton and Race in the Making of America

THE HUMAN COSTS OF ECONOMIC POWER

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By Gene Dattel

IVAN R. DEE

Copyright © 2009 Gene Dattel
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-56663-747-3

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Chapter One

The Silent Issue at the Constitutional Convention

BY MANY ACCOUNTS the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a profound manifestation of the American passion for liberty and freedom, a hunger that animated the country literally from the beginning. This depiction is easy to accept. Who doesn't wish to believe in the moral, egalitarian, and democratic origins of one's country? But in this rose-colored tale, we have left out a great deal. The Constitutional Convention, far from being an exalted meeting of the minds, was often a fractious struggle where lofty ideals were subsumed beneath the deep anxieties of America's founders. Here we look past the rhetoric-so far removed from today's politicians and celebratory historians and thus easily romanticized-to focus on the far more mundane but revealing realities of the convention. What we find, again and again, is a desire for economic development that trumped almost all else. For this hodgepodge of not often "united" states, the need to make money demanded a semblance of unity and collective purpose. And toward this end, enormous compromises were made, agreements that would make America an economic powerhouse butone with serious social ills. Economic self-interest and national growth complemented each other from the start.

The Constitutional Convention affords an appropriate beginning for the story of cotton and the black experience in America. While there was no cotton production to speak of at the time, within decades the cotton boom would radically redirect the country and become a virulent example of the oft-repeated American pattern of land speculation, settlement, commerce, and economic vitality. In contrast to cotton, the importance of race was apparent right from the nation's colonial beginnings. North and South alike profited from the importation of African men, women, and children. By the time of the convention, many of the delegates believed that slavery was an essential feature of their state, even if some of them claimed to despise the institution and others believed that the sale of persons would eventually disappear. Thus cotton was not even a part of the consciousness of the new nation while the bondage of human beings soon was very much embedded in the American brain (and ledger sheet). Before long, an insignificant crop would become the engine of the American economy, and the thorny practice of slavery, far from dying out, would become even more vital for the expansion of King Cotton. After slavery, white America obliged cotton with another century of black bondage.

Although the cotton phenomenon was years away, the destiny of blacks in the cotton fields resulted from commercial priorities and racial attitudes that were on display at the Constitutional Convention. Slave-produced cotton would find fertile soil in the commercial and racial world of the Founding Fathers. At the convention the issue of slavery was subordinated to union as the delegates confronted a choice: a nation with slavery, or no nation without slavery. But no one at the convention could envision a cotton kingdom that would spawn delusions of a slave empire.

While Americans are taught to revere the Founding Fathers as statesmen with exalted ideals, these men were earthbound and very much concerned with business and economic survival. The convention was largely provoked not by ideals but by the need to impose order on the commercial chaos that resulted from the government under the Articles of Confederation. At the time of the convention, foreign intervention, squabbling among states, Indian occupation, confusion over land ownership, the lust for more land, and a shortage of settlers hampered economic viability. Despite some prosperity, the Federalists who initiated the convention saw the advantages of a strong central government and the perils of state sovereignty. The priorities, fears, hopes, visions, and obligations of the delegates and the states became clear as the Constitution was forged through debate and compromise.

* * *

Before the Constitution, America's governing document had been the Articles of Confederation, which in 1781 had created a loose association of the thirteen states. The document gave the states supreme power while restricting the central government. Each state had one vote; all measures had to be passed unanimously. The resulting disorder, fragmentation, and competition hampered political and commercial activity. It was state sovereignty run amok, threatening the existence of a fragile union. Foreigners took note of the bedlam. The French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois, an ardent admirer of the United States and a six-year resident, summarized the state of the government under the Articles of Confederation: "There is no Congress, no committee, no President, no minister of any department. All affairs, especially the finances are falling into confusion even worse than in the past." As a result of the chaos, an interstate convention was held in Annapolis in September 1786 to rectify the commercial flaws of the Articles. This commercial convention was the prelude to the Constitutional Convention.

The statesmen who assembled at the Philadelphia State House on May 25, 1787, were aware of America's potential for greatness. They were equally mindful of, and anxious about, the many obstacles that might sabotage the young commercial republic. The need to raise revenues and quell land quarrels, belligerent squabbling over conflicting state laws and policies, Indian threats and the condescension of foreign powers-all these concerns demanded a stronger central government. The delegates also had to grapple with the issue of slavery, which threatened the convention's agenda and hence jeopardized the very existence of the United States. Slavery created a sectional divide that threatened to thwart the convention. James Madison clearly outlined the breach: "... the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but principally from their having or not having slaves.... It did not lie between the large and small States; it lay between Northern and Southern." Madison's motivation for his warning, it has been argued, was his need to divert attention from the big state-small state controversy over proportional representation to another area-sectional strife over slavery. If so, he picked the topic that was sure to create the greatest emotional response.

The sparsely settled colonies and the consequent shortage of workers meant that in the seventeenth century slave labor was ensconced in the economic and social fabric of the Southern states, where it suited the profitable production of staple crops like tobacco, rice, and indigo. By 1787, slavery had proven to be unprofitable in the Northern states, where staple crops were not grown. (At no point in the nation's history were large-scale slave populations used to produce anything other than staple crops.) The census population statistics of 1790 are compelling. Of the roughly 700,000 slaves in America, 642,000 lived in the South, 42,000 in the North. In addition there were 59,466 "free colored" persons. Slaves accounted for approximately 17 percent of the total U.S. population at the time of the Constitutional Convention. A disproportionate 396,463 slaves, or 60 percent of the slave population, lived in the two primary tobacco-growing states of Maryland and Virginia.

But while slaves lived primarily in the South, slavery was a nationwide business. Hundreds of slave ships were based in ports along the East Coast, including Boston and Newport, Rhode Island. The first American slave ship, the Desire, had been built in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1683. An anti-slavery advocate, William Ellery of Rhode Island, in 1791 described his state's attachment to slave trading: "An Ethiopian could as soon change his skin as a Newport merchant could be induced to change so lucrative a trade as that in slaves for the slow profits of manufactory."

Southern slaveholders, no matter their views on the morality of human bondage, were chained to their slaves by economic necessity. George Mason, the Virginia delegate who excoriated slavery and the slave trade, owned more than two hundred slaves. Slaves, he thundered, "produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant; they bring the judgment of heaven on a country.... Slavery discourages arts and manufacturers. The poor despise labor when they see it performed by slaves." Mason, a resident of the largest slave state, blamed the British for introducing the slave trade and also New Englanders, whose "lust for gain embarked on this nefarious traffic."

Yet by 1787 the belief was common that slavery would wither away of its own accord. The long-term health of the slave-grown tobacco business was in doubt. Thomas Jefferson observed in 1781 that "tobacco was fast declining at the commencement of this war, it must decline in return of peace." Tobacco was known to deplete the soil, and a whiff of serious stagnation in tobacco prices had already been detected. The other slave-produced crops, rice and indigo, were small markets.

Thus nothing on the economic horizon in 1787 suggested a massive demand for slave labor. Accordingly, while the price of slaves might be volatile for years at a time, eventually the price would be determined by the profit earned from their forced labor. Without profit or the expectation of profit, slavery could not be maintained exclusively as a social system. Some of the delegates assumed and hoped that slavery would therefore wither away over a period of time. Connecticut's Oliver Ellsworth cautioned against interference, for "Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." His Connecticut colleague Roger Sherman thought that "the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the U.S." and that the "good sense of the several States" would mean the end of the institution. Later, at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, James Wilson expressed a similar opinion about the eventual demise of slavery: "and though the period is more distant than I could wish, yet it will produce the same kind of gradual change for the whole nation as was pursued in Pennsylvania." This notion of slavery's eventual death, plus the lack of any immediately foreseeable stimulus for slave expansion, gave the anti-slavery delegates comfort in their decisions to compromise.

Regardless of slavery's future, the priority of the Constitutional Convention was to create a framework for an effective national government. The stakes were high. An uncompromising stance in favor of abolition might destroy the possibility of the union itself. As the historian Edmund Morgan wrote, no one "could insist on abolition. To have done so would have ended the convention." The South's "huge investment" and "vested interest" precluded any practical plan for abolition. What labor system would be used to replace slavery, and what would be done with the former slaves?

As the issues of slavery were raised-the slave trade; how to count slaves in apportioning the legislature; import and export taxes on slave-produced staple crops; the protection provided by fugitive slave laws; and assistance for putting down a possible slave insurrection-most of the demands of the South were met. Abolition, gradual emancipation, equality for free blacks, and the removal of free blacks from America were not on the agenda.

The most emotional condemnation of slavery came from Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania during debate over whether-and how-to count slaves for the purpose of representation in the legislature. In his oft-quoted remarks, Morris called slavery a "nefarious institution ... the curse of Heaven on the states where it prevailed. ... Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote...." Morris also introduced a motion to limit slavery geographically to the "Deep South." Another delegate from Pennsylvania, John Dickinson, proposed that slave importation be banned in states that had already ended the slave trade. Fear of Southern objection doomed both suggestions. Gouverneur Morris's righteous stand was, however, mere rhetoric. A land speculator, Morris ultimately succumbed to the priority of establishing a union, voted for the Constitution, and was largely responsible for its final draft.

Two ostensibly disparate trading states, Connecticut and South Carolina, provided the key support that allowed the Constitution to be approved at the convention. Connecticut certainly had small farmers who tilled its rocky New England soil, but it also epitomized the commercial spirit of the new nation with its fleet of some three hundred cargo ships. It exported cattle, lumber, and foodstuffs to West Indian slaveholders, a trading volume greater than Boston's and equal to New York's. Like all New England states, Connecticut found the ownership of slaves unprofitable but gained from the slave trade and did a thriving business with slaveowners. In 1784 it had passed a gradual emancipation bill. In the 1790 census, Connecticut's population of 238,141 included 2,759 slaves and 2,801 "free colored." Black slaves were thus a tiny 1 percent of the total population. By contrast, South Carolina's population was 249,073, of which 107,094 were slaves and 1,801 "free colored." Slaves made up 43 percent of South Carolina's population. Its trading economy was built on slave labor, which produced its export crops.

The two most important Connecticut delegates were anti-slavery advocates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. Sherman, awkward in appearance and attire, had risen from a poor background to become a gifted lawyer, politician, and judge. A "crafty debater," he spoke 138 times at the convention, more often than all but three other delegates. Ellsworth, Yale and Princeton educated, a lawyer and superb orator, generally followed the lead of his colleague Sherman. South Carolina's delegates-Pierce Butler, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and John Rutledge-were all forceful proponents of slavery and pro-slavery legislation. Rutledge famously highlighted sectional differences by declaring that the interests of the North and South are as "different as the interests of Russia and Turkey."

John Rutledge rejected moral arguments. He asserted that "religion and humanity had nothing to do with ... [the slave trade]. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question is whether Southern states shall or shall not be parties to the union." His fellow South Carolinian Charles Pinckney was equally blunt: "South Carolina can never [support a constitution] if it prohibits the [foreign] slave trade." He softened his remarks by suggesting that South Carolina might "abolish the importation of slaves, as Virginia and Maryland had done." In any event, he observed, it was South Carolina's choice to "do of herself what is wished." In other words, no state or national government could tell South Carolina what to do. The ultimatum had been delivered.

For Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, the priority was to create a union and gain advantage for Connecticut. This called for compromise or, more precisely, concessions to the South. Sherman and South Carolina's John Rutledge discussed a bargain over wine and dinner. Rutledge wanted protection for slavery; Sherman wanted land. Ellsworth, Sherman's protegé, set aside moral issues and followed Sherman's lead. He subordinated his anti-slavery views to other priorities-personal, state, and national. It was said of Ellsworth that he "never missed a chance to make a dollar." Indeed, his financial dealings gave him a strong vested interest in producing a Constitution and a national government. He wanted a commercially prosperous nation in which the economic activities of the states complemented one another: "What enriches a part [of the country] enriches the whole and the states are the best judge of their particular [interests]." Sherman believed that the "public good did not require" prohibition of the slave trade. For him, it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed Constitution. He said plainly that "it was better to let the southern states import slaves ... if they make that a sine qua non." He thought "it best to leave the matter rather than force them out of the union."

Southerners demanded a union with slavery. New Englanders, led by Sherman and Ellsworth, were concerned above all with economic security and growth. They seemed genuinely to believe that slavery would grow extinct over time. And so the deal was struck. Neither equality for free blacks nor even whether they fit in America was ever considered in the constitutional debates.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Cotton and Race in the Making of America by Gene Dattel Copyright © 2009 by Gene Dattel. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Part I: Slavery in the Making of the Constitution Chapter 1: The Silent Issue at the Constitutional Convention Part II: The Engine of American Growth, 1787–1861 Chapter 2: Birth of an Obsession Chapter 3: Land Expansion and White Migration to the Old Southwest Chapter 4: The Movement of Slaves to the Cotton States Chapter 5: The Business of Cotton Chapter 6: The Roots of War Part III: The North: For Whites Only, 1800–1865 Chapter 7: Being Free and Black in the North Chapter 8: The Colonial North Chapter 9: Race Moves West Chapter 10: Tocqueville on Slavery, Race, and Money in America Part IV: King Cotton Buys a War Chapter 11: Cultivating a Crop, Cultivating a Strategy Chapter 12: Great Britain and the Civil War Chapter 13: Cotton and Confederate Finance Chapter 14: Procuring Arms Chapter 15: Cotton Trading in the United States Chapter 16: Cotton and the Freedmen Part V: The Racial Divide and Cotton Labor, 1865–1930 Chapter 17: New Era, Old Problems Chapter 18: Ruling the Freedmen in the Cotton Fields Chapter 19: Reconstruction Meets Reality Chapter 20: The Black Hand on the Cotton Boll Chapter 21: From Cotton Field to Urban Ghetto: The Chicago Experience Part VI: Cotton Without Slaves, 1865–1930 Chapter 22: King Cotton Expands Chapter 23: The Controlling Laws of Cotton Finance Chapter 24: The Delta Plantation: Labor and Land Chapter 25: The Planter Experience in the Twentieth Century Chapter 26: The Long-Awaited Mechanical Cotton Picker Chapter 27: The Abdication of King Cotton

What People are Saying About This

H. W. Brands

"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."--(H. W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas and author of The Money Men)

Morgan Freeman

"Gene Dattel's book tells the story of the irresistible power of cotton that changed the destiny of the nation-not just the region. America's material obsession blossomed in the cotton fields, where blacks were trapped. Racial hostility-both North and South-was the enabler. His book masterfully captures the history and its painful legacy."

Henry Kaufman

"This is an engrossing and revealing study. 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. 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 1776 and as the author concludes 'America no longer needs cotton, but still bears cotton's human legacy."--(Henry Kaufman, economist and author of On Money and Markets)

Gavin Wright

"Gene Dattel turns economic history into a gripping narrative in this sweeping synthesis of an important but underappreciated chapter in the American past. 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."--(Gavin Wright, professor of economics at Stanford University and author of Slavery and American Economic Development, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War, and The Political Economy of the Cotton South)

Lee A. Daniels

This is an epic story with a deeply tragic element to it, as the book's subtitle makes clear; and Dattel explores it with a steeliness that raises the most serious questions about the nature of the American democratic experiment today.

Richard Sylla

"Books about American history tend to be either triumphal or highly critical. Gene Dattel's study of the racial legacy of cotton, America's leading export up to World War II, is neither. 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."--(Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets; Professor of Economics, New York University)

Niall Ferguson

"Gene Dattel has produced a superb study of King Cotton's reign over the United States of America. 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. 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."--(Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History, Harvard University, and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School)

Editorial Reviews

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.

John McCardell

Cotton and Race demonstrates clearly and coherently the importance of slavery and commodity agriculture to the economic history of the United States.. .. The book provides a satisfying overview of the scholarly literature and its findings.. .. It is the author's tone that makes this book useful, as well as the organization of material.. .. For the average student in a general U.S. history survey, or an upper-level class in southern business or history, Dattel hits the nail on the head.

Business History Review

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 1960s. 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.

Staughton Lynd

Don’t miss this one.

Delta Review

This is a highly readable account of the centrality of cotton in any attempt to understand the dynamic historical interplay of race relations and economic development in the United States. Paraphrasing Marx, the book argues that without slavery there would have been no cotton and without cotton no modern industry.. .. Compelling.

The Antioch Review

This is an engrossing and revealing study. 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. 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 1776 and as the author concludes America no longer needs cotton, but still bears cotton’s human legacy.

Henry Kaufman

For many people, Gene Dattel's study will be an eye-opener guaranteed to change their idea of the American experience.. .. A narrative that is both an impressive work of history and an important sociological masterwork.

Foreword Reviews

In this book Gene Dattel weaves the histories of cotton production and race relations into a critical narrative of the United States from the aftermath of the Revolution through the Great Depression.

Journal of Southern History

This is a book not just for those who grew up in the cotton fields of Mississippi as I did, but far more than that it is a challenging and compelling account of the complex role which cotton has played in the economic, racial, and political history of our nation. 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.

William F. Winter

Books about American history tend to be either triumphal or highly critical. Gene Dattel’s study of the racial legacy of cotton, America’s leading export up to World War II, is neither. 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.

Richard Sylla

Although most of the facts in this book will be familiar, Dattel nicely draws together the literature on the cotton South, financial markets, and northern racism to make the compelling argument that the South's desire for cotton and northern complicity irrevocably altered American racial history.. .. Dattel's choice to conclude with a technological innovation fits well with one of his underlying themes: history is largely shaped by technology and finance.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online

A very powerful and informative book.. .. 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.

William H. McNeill

The book is as important as it is provocative.. .. Dattel makes a valuable contribution indeed.

The Journal Of Economic History

Independent scholar Dattel provides a thoughtful analysis of cotton's economic power and the ways in which it helped shape race relations in the U.S.. .. Recommended.

Choice Reviews

Gene Dattel has written a very important and necessary book, by locating the expansion of cotton production as a driving force not only in the antebellum South, but in the economy at large. He exposes slave-produced cotton’s central role in causing the Civil War and as the global economic engine that prolonged slavery. Cotton was coveted by New York merchants and the textile barons of England and New England. He shows that after the Civil War cotton and race remained linked until technology finally displaced black labor. He devastatingly critiques the complicit role of the racist North in containing African Americans in the cotton fields. The legacy of this vital crop was economic growth and the social tragedy of slavery and segregation. No examination of American heritage is complete without an understanding of the force that cotton wrought upon its economic and social landscape. America’s racial dilemma cannot be sequestered to one part of the country.

Roger Wilkins

Independent scholar Dattel provides a thoughtful analysis of cotton's economic power and the ways in which it helped shape race relations in the U.S.. .. Recommended.

Choice

Independent scholar Dattel provides a thoughtful analysis of cotton's economic power and the ways in which it helped shape race relations in the U.S. . . . Recommended.

CHOICE

In this book Gene Dattel weaves the histories of cotton production and race relations into a critical narrative of the United States from the aftermath of the Revolution through the Great Depression.

The Journal of Southern History

For many people, Gene Dattel's study will be an eye-opener guaranteed to change their idea of the American experience. . . . A narrative that is both an impressive work of history and an important sociological masterwork.

ForeWord Reviews

In this book Gene Dattel weaves the histories of cotton production and race relations into a critical narrative of the United States from the aftermath of the Revolution through the Great Depression.

The Journal Of Southern History

Two themes, one explicit, one implicit, compete in this exploration of the link between the development of American capitalism and the devastation of the African-American community. The price of cotton as the “determinant of America's destiny, influencing and even overcoming individual will and ethical behavior” is the fully explicit one. In treating it, Dattel (The Sun Never Rose), formerly a managing director at Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley, offers an economic history of cotton. The book's chronological path absorbs the creation of the Confederacy, the waging of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the rise of the Klan, the development of sharecropping, the displacement of black labor by machine and the falling price of cotton. The secondary and competing theme is Northern complicity in the slave trade, the cotton economy, segregation, racism and the development of the “black underclass in the North and South, with its destructive behavioral characteristics.” The economic slant leads to interesting tables and statistics concerning fluctuations in the price of cotton, but for serious readers, the usefulness of Dattel's work is diminished by his heavy reliance on secondary sources and casual documentation. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Gene Dattel has produced a superb study of King Cotton’s reign over the United States of America. 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. 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.

Niall Ferguson

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.

H. W. Brands

Eugene Dattel’s command of the details of American economic and social life is impressive in this sweeping study of the relationship between cotton and its human legacy in the treatment of African Americans. 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.

Charles Reagan Wilson

Dattel connects these forces in a way that offers a fresh analysis of King Cotton's place in US history.. .. Dattel goes to great lengths to explicate how the arrangements of these banking, transportation, and manufacturing concerns affected life on southern farms.. .. A highly readable non-academic sweep through cotton's impact on American civilization, [the reader] will not be disappointed.

Agricultural History

This is an epic story with a deeply tragic element to it, as the book's subtitle makes clear; and Dattel explores it with a steeliness that raises the most serious questions about the nature of the American democratic experiment today.

The Defender Online Blog - Lee A. Daniels

Gene Dattel turns economic history into a gripping narrative in this sweeping synthesis of an important but underappreciated chapter in the American past. 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.

Gavin Wright

Gene Dattel’s book tells the story of the irresistible power of cotton that changed the destiny of the nation—not just the region. America’s material obsession blossomed in the cotton fields, where blacks were trapped. Racial hostility—both North and South—was the enabler. His book masterfully captures the history and its painful legacy.

Morgan Freeman

Although most of the facts in this book will be familiar, Dattel nicely draws together the literature on the cotton South, financial markets, and northern racism to make the compelling argument that the South's desire for cotton and northern complicity irrevocably altered American racial history. . . . Dattel's choice to conclude with a technological innovation fits well with one of his underlying themes: history is largely shaped by technology and finance.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online