A quick glance at the numbers shows what happened. American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860 (a bale is a compressed bundle of cotton weighing between 400 and 500 pounds). This astonishing increase in supply did not cause a long-term decrease in the price of cotton. The cotton boom, however, was the main cause of the increased demand for enslaved labor – the number of enslaved individuals in America grew from 700,000 in 1790 to 4,000,000 in 1860. Americans were well aware of the fact that the economic value placed on an enslaved person generally correlated to the price of cotton. Thus, the cotton economy controlled the destiny of enslaved Africans.
By 1860, Great Britain, the world’s most powerful country, had become the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and a significant part of that nation’s industry was cotton textiles. Nearly 4,000,000 of Britain’s total population of 21,000,000 were dependent on cotton textile manufacturing. Nearly forty percent of Britain’s exports were cotton textiles. Seventy-five percent of the cotton that supplied Britain’s cotton mills came from the American South, and the labor that produced that cotton came from the enslaved.
Because of British demand, cotton was vital to the American economy. The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Douglass C. North, stated that cotton “was the most important proximate cause of expansion” in the 19th century American economy. Cotton accounted for over half of all American exports during the first half of the 19th century. The cotton market supported America’s ability to borrow money from abroad. It also fostered an enormous domestic trade in agricultural products from the West and manufactured goods from the East. In short, cotton helped tie the country together...
On the eve of the Civil War, cotton provided the economic underpinnings of the Southern economy. Cotton gave the South power — both real and imagined. Cotton dictated the South’s huge role in a global economy that included Europe, New York, other New England states, and the American west. This economic growth exacted a severe and tragic human price through slavery and the prejudicial treatment of free Black people.
Mississippi was, therefore, both a captive of the cotton world and a major player in the 19th century global economy.
William Faulkner, Mississippi’s most famous novelist, once said, “To understand the world, you have to understand a place like Mississippi.”
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