Unfortunately, though, the labor used to harvest the cotton crop was of a slave nature. And it's because of this that cotton played a paramount role in the birth of the American Civil War. “By the early 1800s, Europe, particularly Britain, had a ravenous appetite for cotton, and the American South was far and away the leading exporter. In 1810, the South was supplying Britain with 48% of its needs. By 1830, that percentage would rise to 70%, and hold that level up to 1860. At the end of the War of 1812, annual cotton production in the South was less than 150,000 bales. By 1860, that total would rise to 3.8 million. Not only was cotton America's largest export (as it would remain until the 1930s), it was also the biggest single source of the country's growing wealth.” Cotton was an incredibly important product, when you look at the humanitarian aspect and the kinds of garments the people were previously accustomed to wearing. And with improvements in harvesting techniques, the price of cotton yarn was falling considerably, to the benefit of all. “Historian Paul Johnson notes that by the early 1860s, the price of cotton cloth was about one percent of what it had been in 1784.” But, there was a price and it was the slaves who paid it. Ironically, were it not for cotton, various religious movements across the land may have swept the slave practice away. Cotton, instead, turned slaveholding into a powerful political force. And cotton also played a leading role in some of the financial panics that afflicted America in the first half of the 19th century, particularly the Panics of 1819 and 1837. The source of the former turmoil was a sudden collapse in cotton prices in the English market. In 1818, American cotton had temporarily soared to 32.5 cents a pound. The high price forced British textile manufacturers to turn away from this source and look to cheaper ones from the East Indies, so that by 1819 the price had fallen to 14 cents. “The Panic of 1837 was the result of falling British demand for cotton, mostly due to existing stockpiles, which set off bank runs in the U.S. Then in 1839, a bumper cotton crop led to a new collapse in prices, setting off a depression. By 1850 in America, the slave states had about 42% of the population, but only 18% of the manufacturing capacity. And the vast majority of any new immigration was finding its way to the North. As for cotton, while 70% was exported, 5% stayed in the South and the other 25% went to northern mills, where the value added by manufacturers equaled the price that raw cotton brought the South, which in turn imported two-thirds of its clothing and other manufactured goods from the North or abroad.” And a final hook was that the very ships that carried cotton from the South and returned with manufactured goods were almost exclusively owned by northern or British companies. Nonetheless, with cotton prices firming after the plunge of the late 1830s / 1840s, and with bumper crops, many planters began to think twice about secession, as the movement gained ground. But there was still this issue of manufacturing capacity. Because of slavery, a cotton plantation could be laid out and in full production in two years, and it was even possible to harvest a crop in one year. In the census report of 1860, the government said, "The growth of the culture and manufacture of cotton in the U.S. constitutes the most striking feature of the industrial history of the last 50 years." By 1860, while the image of the South's economy was still poor, in fact, the average per capita income of $103 was good as far as the rest of the world was concerned, about the same as Switzerland, and exceeded only by the North, Great Britain, and Australia. And as the secessionist cries picked up in the slave states, it was South Carolina Senator James Hammond who proclaimed, "You dare not make war upon our cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is King." The South had the illusion that "King

Some topics in this essay:
Eli Whitney, Enslaved Africans, East Indies, American South, Embargo Act, Civil War, South West, Paul Johnson, Cotton Diplomacy, Britain France, cotton gin, demand cotton, civil war, southern economy, cotton production, price cotton, seeds cotton, enslaved africans, invention cotton gin, separate seeds, invention cotton, cotton gin cotton, southern economy cotton, cotton gin created, demand cotton increased,