The tobacco plant, Nicotiana tabacum. Public-domain photograph.
Southern leaders gambled that Europe needed their cotton so badly a new confederacy could not be shut out.
A poor white family in the Cotton Belt did not own the crop politicians called king, and a Black family was the labor the bet was built on.
A small farmer who grew food rather than cotton had little of the export wealth and still lived inside the planters’ politics.
Planters and cotton factors who already owned land, people, and British credit believed holding back the fiber would bring recognition and loans.
By 1860 raw cotton was the nation’s largest export, and British mills depended on it.
Secessionists argued that a boycott or a blockade would force Britain and France to intervene.
Europe had stocks and other sources, including Egypt and India, and cotton never bought that alliance.
James Henry Hammond, Senate speech of March 4, 1858; Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (2014)