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| The Cotton “kingdom” in the United States. |
“ not through Boston, and New York, and Philadelphia,” but through their own ports. “What tariff we shall adopt as a war tariff,” he said, “I expect to discuss in a few months later, in another chamber. I tell you that Cotton is King!” 1
1 The production of cotton for commerce has hitherto been confined to a portion of ten States, as indicated on the accompanying map, the northern limit of the profitable culture of the plant being, it is said, the northern boundary of Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The entire area of the ten Cotton-producing States, in 1860, was 666,196 square miles, of which only 10,888 square miles were devoted to the cotton culture in that year. On those 10,888 square miles, 4,675,710 bales of cotton, weighing 400 pounds each, were raised in 1859-60. Of this amount Great Britain took 2,019,252 bales, or more than one-third of the. entire crop; France took 450,696 bales, and the States north of the Potomac took 760,218 bales.
The accompanying map is a reduced copy of a i)art of one, prefixed to a Report to the Boston Board of Trade on the Cotton Manufacture of 1862, by Edward Atkinson. The solid black lines inclose the principal cotton regions in the ten States alluded to. The limit of cotton culture in 1860 is indicated by a dotted line, thus . . . . The isothermal line of wean summer temperature is shown by dotted lines, thus---------
It was the continual boast of the politicians in the Cotton-producing States, that the money value of their staple was greater than that of all the other agricultural productions of the whole country. This assertion went from lip to lip, uncontradicted, and fixed the impression on the public mind that Cotton really was King. Every census contradicted it, but the people in the Slave-labor States were allowed to know very little about the census contradicted it, but the people in the Slave-labor States were allowed to know very little about the census. That of 1860 shows that the wheat crop alone (raised mostly in the Free-labor States), in that year, far exceeded in value, at the current price, that of the entire cotton crop. The aggregate value of the cotton was $183,000,000, and that of wheat was $240,000,000, or $57,000,000 greater. The aggregate value of the wheat, corn, hay, and oats crops alone, that year, was over $1,100,000,000. As an article of export, cotton was largely in excess of any other item of agricultural production. The total value of these productions of the United States exported to foreign countries, for the year ending the 30th of June, 1859, was $222,909,718. That of cotton was $161,434,923, or sixty-two and a half millions of dollars less than that of other agricultural exports. The value of the cotton crop was not an eighth part of that of the whole agricultural products of the country; and yet, politicians, in order to deceive the Southern people with false notions of their strength and independence, and the absolute sovereignty of Cotton, declared it to be greater than all others. When the trial came, and the claim of Cotton to kingship was tested, the result justified the poet in writing, that--
Cotton and Corn were mighty Kings,
Who differed at times on certain things,
To the country's dire confusion:
Corn was peaceable, mild, and just,
But Cotton was fond of saying, “You must ;”
So, after he'd boasted, and bullied, and cussed,
He got up a Revolution.
But, in course of time, the bubble is bursted,
And Corn is King, and Cotton is — worsted.
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