RECOMMENDED READING: COTTON AND RACE IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA BY GENE DATTEL
Cotton and Race in the Making of America -- The Human Costs of Economic Power by Gene Dattel
From the early 19th century to the middle of the last century, writes Gene Dattel, cotton was America's leading export crop, helping make the United States one of the world's largest commercial powers. Yet this development would have been utterly impossible without the institution of slavery, which filled the fields with unpaid workers wherever cotton was grown.
As early as the 1830's, European commentator Alexis de Tocqueville's startling insights about the institution of slavery hauntingly foreshadowed the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The French visitor, who ironically believed slavery made little economic sense for slaveowners, wrote that emancipation wouldn't bring true freedom to slaves, who would be forever branded with a stamp of inferiority:
"Thus it is in the United States that the prejudice which repels the Negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners (customs) while it is effaced from the laws of the land."
In the process, de Tocqueville eviscerated the plantation owners whose "love of wealth" emasculated a race: "I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men....The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all Americans do."
"When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite," argues Dattel, "it became the first truly complex global business and a driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial 'sea legs.'"
Gene Dattel grew up in the Mississippi Delta and spent 20 years in the financial capital markets. He now lectures widely as an independent scholar.
From the early 19th century to the middle of the last century, writes Gene Dattel, cotton was America's leading export crop, helping make the United States one of the world's largest commercial powers. Yet this development would have been utterly impossible without the institution of slavery, which filled the fields with unpaid workers wherever cotton was grown.
As early as the 1830's, European commentator Alexis de Tocqueville's startling insights about the institution of slavery hauntingly foreshadowed the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The French visitor, who ironically believed slavery made little economic sense for slaveowners, wrote that emancipation wouldn't bring true freedom to slaves, who would be forever branded with a stamp of inferiority:
"Thus it is in the United States that the prejudice which repels the Negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners (customs) while it is effaced from the laws of the land."
In the process, de Tocqueville eviscerated the plantation owners whose "love of wealth" emasculated a race: "I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men....The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all Americans do."
"When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite," argues Dattel, "it became the first truly complex global business and a driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial 'sea legs.'"
Gene Dattel grew up in the Mississippi Delta and spent 20 years in the financial capital markets. He now lectures widely as an independent scholar.
"I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men....The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all Americans do."
Amazing how this destrcutive dynamic is still strangling all of us even today!
It reminds me of a great quote by John Steinbeck: '"THE PAST IS NOT DEAD. IT'S NOT EVEN PAST."