Georgia Historical Society

King Cotton 

As land opened for settlement in the western and northern regions of Georgia (see the Nineteenth Century Exhibit for discussions of the gold rush and Indian removal), planters had to resort to other agricultural means to take advantage of it.  Rice, the backbone of the agrarian economy of coastal Georgia, required the long growing season and extensive irrigation found in the Southeast’s tidal areas.  Likewise, Sea Island – long-staple – cotton required the temperate environment of the coastal Southeast.

Cotton, however, was becoming a high demand product.  Short-staple cotton, a hardier plant which grew in a wide variety of soils and climates, seemed to be the answer in meeting greater demand, but it required large numbers of laborers due to the time involved in cleaning the cotton.  Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, invented in 1793, changed that and the nature of southern slavery as well.  By the eve of the Civil War, slavery was firmly entrenched from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River and from the Gulf of Mexico to Arkansas.

Garnett Andrews letter, 1852, MS 9.  Andrews sent this letter to the editors of the Southern Cultivator and it was printed in part in King Cotton: The True History of the Cotton Gin by M.L. Rutherford. Click here for a transcript.

Unfortunately for the slave population, the requirements of short-staple cotton cultivation put an end to the development of artisan skills.  While slaves in coastal Georgia continued to develop these skills, the millions of slaves moved from the coast to the uplands of the South found themselves living the harsh life of the gang system.  Although the cotton gin allowed for fewer laborers to clean cotton, rather than pull slaves from the fields and provide them with the incentives of the task system as had been done on the coast, planters kept their slaves working hard clearing more land for cotton.

Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the master/slave relationship of southern cotton culture did witness the same challenges to the gang system as had been played out along the coast.  During these challenges black slaves earned some of the benefits their predecessors had earned on the rice plantations.  One of the most enduring institutions born and cemented into black life during this time was the African-American church.  But despite blacks’ Christianity, a new depiction of black people became embedded in the minds of white Americans.

The notion of white supremacy took on a new justification in the mid-nineteenth century.  This one, coming from both the pulpit and the laboratory, placed the black population among a lower class of existence to an extent never before seen in the United States.  This led to a new relationship between whites and blacks. Ira Berlin, in Many Thousands Gone, stated,

Slaveholders discovered much of value in supremacist ideology.  The inferiority of black people confirmed the necessity, if not the benevolence, of mastership.  Planters elaborated such notions, sometimes endowing black men and women with a vicious savagery and sometimes with a docile imbecility.  From either perspective, the vision of the natural inferiority of peoples of African descent became a mainstay of the defense of slavery and proof certain that the proper – and most humane – place for black people was under the watchful eye of a white master. (p. 363)

Teaching Tips: 
1. Ask the students to read the Garnett Andrews letter and then examine the layout of the Arcadia Plantation buildings.  How can the two documents be used together to tell a more complete story?
2. What can students take form the Andrews letter regarding the following:

a. women in the early 19th century South
b. the Talbot slaves
c. the protection of trade secrets

See the Nineteenth Century Exhibit for a discussion of the Civil War in Georgia.  Below are a few images to add to the discussion and to further an understanding of encounters and exchanges between whites and blacks and North and South during the period:

Political cartoons from Confederate Anti-Lincoln Literature, by Richard Barksdale Harwell, 1951.  Rare Pamphlet Collection, E457.63.H37 1951.  Teaching Tip:  Use these cartoons to complement your lectures.  Ask students to analyze and interpret the cartoons and captions based on what they learned in the classroom.

Charlie Albertson letter to his brothers dated 17 Dec 1864.  Albertson Papers, 1863-1865, MS 2. Click here for a transcript. Teaching Tip:  Use this letter in a discussion of Sherman’s Siege of Savannah in December 1864.  Consider taking a field trip to the Ogeechee Canal Museum just outside of Savannah.  There students can see the formidable terrain Civil War soldiers dealt with in coastal Georgia.

Charlton H. Way slave bills of sale, 1864-1865, MS 843.  Note that these two bills of sale are dated after the Emancipation Proclamation.

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