King by Gene Dattel

America’s sordid racial story begins with 1860. A consumer revolution was born. At the involuntary immigration and slavery. Race- beginning of this period, approximately 77 based bondage was enshrined in the country’s percent of all European garments were made legal system at the Constitutional Conven- of wool; on the eve of the Civil War, cotton tion of 1787. At that time, according to Ed- claimed 73 percent of the market. Enormous mund Morgan, Yale’s renowned colonial hygienic benefits accrued, as well. The appetite historian, slavery was considered a “moral for raw cotton was enormous. anachronism.” The delegates could not have The second key event came about thanks insisted on the abolition of slavery, noted to , who, failing to get a job after Morgan: “To have done so would have ended graduating from Yale, went to Georgia as a the convention.” The young struggling re- tutor on a cotton plantation. Within a couple public faced an ugly choice—a nation with of weeks, in 1793, he had crafted a device which slavery, or no nation at all. separated cottonseed from the lint which was Two trading states, Connecticut and South woven into cloth. A production bottleneck Carolina, provided the support that enabled had been solved. Now, instead of only being the approval of the Constitution. Connecti- able to “clean” one pound of cotton a day, a cut’s anti-slavery representatives viewed the single man could clean fifty. This labor-saving institution as being on the road to extinction. device, in turn, generated an enormous labor Slavery was “dying out anyway,” Connecticut’s shortage—which would be filled by a growing constitutional delegate Roger Sherman said, slave population—as the demand for cotton and would “by degrees disappear.” “Slavery in labor skyrocketed. time,” opined his colleague Oliver Ellsworth, The Founding Fathers were blindsided by “will not be a speck on the horizon.” Sherman, an economic force—the world demand for cot- the grandfather of the Civil War general Wil- ton—and a king was born. “Cotton alone, of liam Tecumseh Sherman, helped broker the all the products of our soil or industry, stirs the constitutional compromises that protected emotions . . . it is the melancholy distinction what some Southerners denominated “our of cotton to be the very stuff of high drama peculiar institution,” slavery. and tragedy, of bloody civil war and the unut- What happened to this prophecy of extinc- terable woe of human slavery,” wrote David L. tion? Slavery would have died without the co- Cohn in his 1956 biography of cotton royalty. incidence of two events. A series of innovations Anne O’Hare McCormick had earlier in 1931 in the British cotton textile industry by the late characterized cotton as “map-maker, trouble- eighteenth century fostered mass production. maker, and history-maker.” Correspondingly, the price of a textile garment The destiny of black America would be dropped by over 90 percent between 1787 and inextricably bound to cotton for sixty years

16 The New Criterion October 2014 King cotton by Gene Dattel before the Civil War and one hundred years Folklore even has credit- afterwards. Cotton and black labor would ing Stowe as the “little woman who wrote only finally decouple in the 1960s with the the book that started this great war!” Stowe advent of the mechanical cotton picker and knew very well and wrote clearly that cotton effective herbicides and pesticides. At that was the sole buttress for slavery. If “something point, the remaining cotton field laborers should bring down the price of cotton once faced displacement. and forever, and make the whole slave property a . . . [burden] in the market,” she wrote, the Economics, not social convention, deter- support for slavery would disappear. mined the African-American experience. With- The economic facts are compelling. Cot- out an economic base, race-based slavery could ton production increased from virtually noth- not exist. Cotton production was easily grafted ing in 1787 to over four and a half million onto the plantation system that was already in (450-pound) bales per year on the eve of the place. Other forms of slave-related agriculture Civil War. The slave population grew from were small, without significant export poten- 700,000 to approximately four million—the tial, and their growth had stagnated. The use majority of whom were directly or indirectly of slaves for industrial labor has been highly involved with cotton production. The price exaggerated and wildly speculative. The Tre- of a slave directly correlated with the price of degar Iron Works in Richmond, a widely cited cotton. The price of a slave rose when trans- example of slave labor in factories, employed ported closer to the cotton-growing regions eighty slaves out of a total 800 employees. of the Deep South. Importantly, slavery only Furthermore, it was not competitive with mills spread where cotton could be grown. either in the North or England. Grandiose Slave-produced cotton was not a regional Southern rhetoric of territorial expansion for affair. The “indispensable” product knit the slavery has erroneously been given unwar- country together. New York City rose to ranted credence. commercial and financial preeminence on Many designate slavery as “foundational” to the cotton trade even before the Erie Canal America. In reality, slavery was itself perched became operative. New York dominated the on a wobbly foundation: the vacillating price financing, trading, and insurance aspects of of cotton, and the roller-coaster economy of the cotton trade. New York, cities in New the South. Historians mistakenly number England, and Philadelphia found a ready the asset value of slaves between $1 billion market for their manufacturing goods in the and $4 billion during the antebellum period. cotton South. Once cotton left the planta- This astounding number, they say, dwarfs the tion, it became sanitized of the injustices that worth of other antebellum sectors—industry, had produced it—quotidian balance sheets, railroads, etc. But this computation is deeply receipts, and bills of lading obscured the taint flawed. Slavery had no sustaining worth inde- of slavery. pendent of cotton in the nineteenth century. The Nobel Prize–winning economic his- The inflated aggregate asset value of slavery torian Douglass North described the crucial may be dramatic, but it is devoid of substance. role of cotton: “Between 1814 and 1860, the The price of a slave was derivative of the price growth of the American economy was stimu- of cotton. If the price of cotton fell, so did the lated to a great extent by the expansion of one price of a slave and the aggregate asset value product—cotton. American exports of cotton would drown in an ocean of illiquidity. The provided a major share of the world supply financing of slavery depended on a revenue and contributed more than half the value of stream from cotton. the nation’s total exports. . . . Cotton was the By depicting the horrors of slavery, Har- most important proximate cause of [American riet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin economic] expansion [before the Civil War].” (1852) became the most politically influential Cotton was a global affair. Great Britain, the American story of the nineteenth century. most powerful nation in the world, was the

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main purchaser of slave-produced American famine occurred until 1862 after the Union vic- cotton before the Civil War. Of the 22 million tory at Antietam. Military victory nullified the inhabitants of Great Britain, 20 percent were potency of the cotton embargo. Inexplicably, directly or indirectly involved with cotton tex- the South ignored the extensive supply of cot- tile production. Her exports were dominated ton in the marketplace. by cotton. Britain was dependent on Ameri- It is intriguing to speculate about the con- can cotton before and after the Civil War. As sequences of the cotton asset bubble in the such, the power of cotton in the nineteenth absence of the Civil War. Had the cotton asset century was comparable to that of oil in the bubble burst, a resounding catastrophe would twentieth century. have ensued for the credit-ridden Southern In the first half of the nineteenth century, economy. As a result, the institution of slav- cotton was primarily responsible for the ery might have morphed into a new financial enslavement of four million blacks. Slave- system that resembled the ar- produced cotton connected the country’s re- rangement after the Civil War. gions, provided the export surplus the young country needed to gain its financial “sea legs,” The attitude of white Northerners during the brought commercial ascendancy to New York nineteenth century towards African Ameri- City, was the driving force for territorial ex- cans provides both a very clear guide and a pansion in the Old Southwest, and fostered determining factor to the fate of blacks after trade between Europe and the United States. emancipation. We should not only ask what From 1803 until 1937, cotton was America’s white Northerners thought about slavery, but leading export, a reign that will likely never what they thought about black people. be surpassed. Historians choose either to ignore or to The South, intoxicated with the power of underestimate vastly the role of the white cotton, embarked on a war to secede from North in assigning free blacks second-class the United States. In effect, slave-produced citizenship. As such, historians have manu- cotton—not slavery itself—caused the Ameri- factured a fairy tale in which the South is the can Civil War. No one would have taken the sole scapegoat for America’s racial dilemma. South seriously without cotton; the South The North, characterized by pervasive racial would not have taken itself seriously with- animosity and a belief in black inferiority, was out cotton. Very quickly, the newly formed desperately afraid of a black migration. The Confederacy established a strategy—embargo white Northerner could be both anti-slavery cotton so that England would be forced to and anti-black. intervene in support of the South. The South Examples abound: Connecticut passed its Carolina Senator gradual emancipation act in 1784. By 1800, out famously warned the North and England in of a population of 244,000, there were only 1858, “What would happen if no cotton was 951 slaves and 5,000 “free colored”; in 1860, furnished for three years? This is certain: there were 8,627 “free colored” in a population England would topple headlong. . . . No, of 451,520 people—roughly 1.9 percent of its you do not dare make war on cotton.” This residents. The Connecticut Academy of Arts cotton threat had been used before by the and Sciences in 1800 sent out a questionnaire. Philadelphian Nicholas Biddle, the head of Article 27 of the survey asked about “Free the Bank of the United States in 1839, and blacks: their number, their vices, and modes would be repeated later by the Union General of life, their industry and success in acquiring Benjamin Butler in 1870. property; whether those born free are more Yet King Cotton was ruled, as are all com- ingenious and virtuous than those who were modities, by a higher law—that of supply and emancipated to adult years.” demand. England was gorged with a huge In 1810, the president of Yale, Timothy surplus of cotton and unsold cotton textiles; Dwight, answered this question in a scath- a cotton asset bubble was in place. No cotton ing sermon:

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These people [free blacks] . . . are generally nei- foreign and feeble element . . . incapable of ther able nor inclined to make their freedom assimilation.” a blessing. . . . For blacks, the hatred of labor Several episodes during the Civil War becomes a habit. . . . They have no thrift; and foreshadowed the future. On January 1, 1863, waste, of course, much of what they earn. They President Lincoln signed the Emancipation have little knowledge either of morals or religion. Proclamation, a singular triumph of Ameri- They are left, therefore, as miserable victims of can history. The day before, he had signed sloth, prodigality, poverty, ignorance, and vice. an appropriation bill allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to colonize, i.e. resettle, Within a few years, Connecticut started a blacks to an island off the coast of Haiti. In colonization society to rid itself of blacks and 1862, the Union Army attempted to send thou- had disenfranchised its tiny black population. sands of refugee slaves to Massachusetts. The In 1857, 80 percent of Connecticut voters reaf- governor of Massachusetts, John Andrew, said firmed the state’s denial of suffrage; Connecti- that they would become paupers and rejected cut voted against the Fifteenth Amendment. them. Abolition only went so far. In 1862, refu- If a state could not accept or assimilate 1.9 gee slaves were sent to Illinois from the Mis- percent of its population, what would hap- sissippi Valley region. Riots ensued and the pen when the numbers were higher, as in the former slaves were remanded to South? The die was cast; America’s racial future to work on abandoned plantations where they was fraught with turbulence. were cheated by Northern lessees. On July 13, Moving west, the situation was worse. 1863, a race riot, called a “Draft Riot,” erupted Historians praise the Northwest Ordinance in New York; troops from the victory at Get- for its exclusion of slavery. In addition to the tysburg were dispatched to quell America’s prohibition of slavery, the states of the old first urban race riot. Northwest wanted to exclude free blacks as well. The territory of Illinois passed a law in After the Civil War, cotton and race were still 1813 which called for every “incoming free black interwoven. On February 26, 1865, The New or mulatto to leave.” If they did not, thirty-nine York Times summarized a world that would still lashes would be applied. There was no conver- be ruled by cotton after Appomattox: sion to racial tolerance during the Civil War. In 1862, Illinois voters voted 5-to-1 to renew White ingenuity and enterprise ought to direct the prohibition on black suffrage. Blacks rep- black labor, Northern capital should flow into these resented 0.5 percent of the population in 1862. rich cotton-lands. . . . The negro race . . . would Black exclusion laws were prevalent. Blacks exist side-by-side with the white for centuries being could not serve on juries, could not intermarry constantly elevated by it, individuals of it rising with whites, and could not serve in the militia. to an equality with the superior race. . . . [Cotton William Henry Seward was President production requires] the white brain employing Abraham Lincoln’s right hand. Seward had the black labor. impeccable anti-slavery credentials. Seward— New York senator, governor, and Lincoln’s Cotton production exceeded prewar levels Secretary of State—had appealed to a “higher within a few years. America regained three- law” than the Constitution to justify aboli- quarters of the export market. After the Civil tion. What did he think about black people? War, slavery was gone but cotton revenue “The North has nothing to do with negroes,” as a financing tool stayed. The funding of said Seward, “I have no more concern for cotton production easily transitioned to them than I have for the Hottentots. They are the equity participation of share-cropping God’s poor; they always have been and will be and crop liens. The new system remained so everywhere.” In 1860, Seward expounded based on cotton revenue. In theory, the sys- on black inferiority: “The great fact is now tem was financially logical; in practice, the fully realized that the African race here is a system was arbitrary, for the black sharecrop-

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per had no legal recourse and was easy prey girls, and the general principles of agriculture for unscrupulous renters. for the boys, might be taught with advantage. Following emancipation, several black lead- ers looked at cotton and its economic poten- Washington’s views have been disparagingly tial as free blacks’ best chance to integrate into dubbed “accommodationalist .” In fact, Ameri- American society without conflict. In an ad- can economics had restricted his options. dress at the 1895 Cotton States and International Even philanthropy was geared towards cot- Exposition in Atlanta, Booker T. Washington ton farming. “We cannot produce cotton for accepted the reality of overt racial segregation the wants of the world,” Andrew Carnegie said at the time while noting that economic growth in a 1903 speech commemorating his enor- would eventually cause its end. mous $600,000 gift to Tuskegee Institute, Washington declared to an all-white audi- the all-black educational institution founded ence, “In all things social we can be as sepa- by Washington. For Carnegie, there was an rate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all “urgent need” for more black people, trained things essential to mutual progress.” In his at Tuskegee, to produce cotton. oft-quoted anatomical metaphor, Washington The continuing importance of cotton did was merely repeating what President Ruther- not escape the giants of black history. The cot- ford B. Hayes—who had been an anti-slavery ton field would be a stepping stone in Booker Union general—had said in 1880 when he re- T. Washington’s strategy for black advance- marked that blacks should be as “separate as ment. The historian Jonathan Karp traces the fingers are, but we require them united Washington’s planned sequence from skilled for every good work, for the national defense, labor to entrepreneurship to “operating fac- one, as the hand.” In his 1890 commencement tories, owning bank stocks . . . to [lending] address at Johns Hopkins University, the Re- white people money.” publican Hayes condescendingly commented Even as the United States moved further that “hitherto [blacks’] . . . chief and almost away from its slave-holding past and the con- only gift has been that of oratory.” fusion of the Civil War, economic participa- Rather than assuming that a retributive pay- tion, with cotton as a staple impetus, was the ment or immediate assimilation would help designated role for black America. the black community, Washington noted in- The black cotton laborer, according to Fred- stead that “No race that has anything to con- erick Douglass, was “as he is nowhere else, an tribute to the markets of the world is long in absolute necessity. He has a monopoly on the any degree ostracized.” Thrift, industry, and market.” Importantly, Douglass wanted black economic contributions were the key elements civil rights protected, but wanted the freedman that would lead to eventual equality. left alone to “stand on his own legs!” Douglass In this, he allied with many white aboli- was dismissive, noted the historian Eric Foner, tionists of the time to advocate for economic of any government assistance that “promoted growth, education, and self-improvement an image of blacks as privileged wards of the within the newly freed black population as a state.” In accordance with the wishes of both pathway to success, albeit within the cotton black and white leaders, government com- confines in which much of the population had pensation was distinctly absent from white existed before. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s educa- America’s strategy for the freed slave. tion for the black children employed by the cotton farm she financed for her son appears to White America, after the Civil War, made the resemble that proposed by the much-maligned decision to contain in the Booker T. Washington. Stowe wanted freed- South. Given the anti-black sentiment in men suited for cotton farming: the North, there was little chance that white Northerners would shed white Southern The teaching . . . ought to be largely industrial blood for black civil and political rights. The . . . Practical sewing, cutting and fitting, for the victorious North could have reconstructed the

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South in any manner. Instead, it withdrew white immigrants moved to the North. Con- troops and went about its business, satisfied tainment ended because of the economic that no massive northern migration would consequences of World War I. The economic take place. impact of that war—a sharp decline in unem- President Ulysses Grant failed to send ployment, a booming industry, and the ces- troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1875 when sation of white immigration—created a labor whites in armed conflict overthrew electoral shortage filled by black southerners. Racial black participation. Grant was asked by the ghettos—another form of containment—dis- able black congressmen from Mississippi, John crimination, and race riots in northern urban R. Lynch, why he did not protect black rights. communities followed straightaway. Free black The bold leader of the Union Army replied Americans were scarcely given time to “stand that if he had sent troops to Mississippi, the on their own legs,” as Douglass had hoped, Republicans would have lost elections in Ohio. before a retrenchment into overt segregation The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, in the South and de facto segregation in the retrospectively endowed with a nimbus of North, and the circumstances around these moral virtue, were saturated with expediency. changes fostered and solidified resentments The Massachusetts Radical Republican George on both sides. S. Boutwell warned in 1866 that a dreaded Cotton production is now a ward of the black migration north would occur if freedmen federal government; technology has eliminated were not given civil and political rights. Bout- the need for a labor force. But its historical rel- well even recommended that Georgia, South evance lives on. The nineteenth-century timing Carolina, and Florida be given exclusively to of an historical coincidence—the confluence former slaves. “Whenever the colored man is of industrial innovations—set in motion the completely and fully protected in the southern cotton boom which both benefitted Amer- states,” rationalized an Illinois congressman, ica’s economy enormously and perpetuated “he will never visit Illinois, and he will never its greatest social tragedies: slavery and its visit Indiana, and every State will be depopu- legacy for African Americans. The impact of lated of colored people as will be Canada.” racial animosity in the North, where cotton The containment policy imposed by white was not grown and race-based slavery was not Northerners for keeping freedmen in the physically present, is grossly underappreciated South was quite effective. Between 1865 and in today’s interpretation of American history. World War I, the black population of the Today’s racial tension is a product of this com- North stayed at 2 percent while millions of plex series of forces.

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