The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770-1860 [Hardcover]

John Hebron Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1988 | ISBN-10: 0807113824 | ISBN-13: 978-0807113820

The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770-1860 traces the evolution of cotton culture in the region bordering the Mississippi River. Moore examines the society supported by that industry, emphasizing technological changes that transformed cotton plantations into agricultural equivalents of factories and slaves into skilled and highly productive farm workers. Unlike other studies of antebellum southern agriculture, this book examines the contributions to the success of the cotton industry made by steamboats and railroads, manufacturing establishments, and the urban population.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr (February 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807113824
• ISBN-13: 978-0807113820
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,466,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A colossal myth: Industrial Revolution in the South would have ended slavery., July 21, 2009

By 

Kurt Grussendorf (Pensacola, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770-1860 (Paperback)

This book is now a classic mainstay of Southern history. But I must say I read it with a more critical eye than in the past to discover that the myth that slavery would have died out because of modern technology rather than a civil war is indeed that--a colossal myth. Far from making slavery unprofitable, the introduction of new agricultural methods and machinery in the late antebellum period was reaping great profits for slave owners who could get more productivity out of the slaves with the machines and new styles of labor management. Most informative of all was the fact that slaves were being employed in southern factories--some at highly skilled jobs including steam engine mechanics. These slaves were not always the property of individuals but of corporations and the profits reaped by such enterprises were stupendous. I was not aware of the widespread use of slaves in more mechanized agriculture and factory shops and the high productivity and profitability that resulted. And the fact that they could be owned by corporations rather than individual owners reveals an alarming complicity between capitalism and forced labor.
This book is by far the most complete compendium of economic activity in Mississippi in the decades leading to the war. Those who insist that technology and capitalist production are the antithesis of slavery should reassess their view. The more entrepreneurial planters and factory owners were growing ever richer with slave labor. Although it is true that industrialism and modern agricultural might have evolved into a wage system for free blacks, there is certainly no guarantee that it would have happened or if it did not necessarily so soon. Without the civil war I fear slavery would have remained alive and well as the Peculiar Institution it was in a South that was profiting from the new agricultural and production techniques of modern technology and industrialism.