The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1855-06-12
From the Louisvil
Cotton is King.

COTTON rs A1ng.
To demonstrate that cotton rules the world,
end that the political doctrines of every
civilized country where manufactures are
prosecuted to any considerable extent, are in
the hands of an oiigarchy of American
planters, is the effect of treatise just is
sued from the press having the title written
above. II is the production of gentleman
of Norfolk, Virginia, who, himself identified
with the South and the interest of that
section, has carefully studied the influence of
her great staple, as from year to year its Gull
tivation and export has grown In Importance.
The work proposes farther, 10 prove, as
corroIlary of the main proposition, that SO
long as the culture of cotton is made the
leading idea in the Southern States, and
England strongly anti-slavery as she is, sees
no wrong in awaiting herself of the projects
of slave labor in her manufacturing establish
ments, that the system of American ne gro
slavery can never be abo ished. To establish
a balance of power in this cotton-goVerned
world, the elevation of the free negro is adj
vocated by the author, and the plan of the
Colonization Society suggested as the only
feasible means of giving position and self
control to the emancipated slave.
A succinct history is given of the various
efforts to abolish slavery in This country, their
success in the Northern States of the confe-
deracy, and the almost immediate revulson
of feeling in the South against this abolition
of the system when the people of that region
discovered the pre-eminent adaptation of
their soil to cotton growing and the economy
of slave labor in its cultivation. The in
crease of cotton expectation to foreign coun-
tries and the growth of slavery in America
have been in almost exact ratio. Nothing
is clearer than this, as our history fully at
tests.
TO show how vain would be any attempt
to disconnect cotton-planting and negro
slavery, the comparison between the West
Indian Islands and the Southern States of
our confederacy need only be instituted. In
1900 the West Indies exported 100000
pounds of cotton, and the United States IT,
78G,SO3 pounds. They were then about
equally productive in that article. In 1910,
the West India exports (where slavery had
been moiny abolished) had dwinded down
to 427 500 pounds, while those of the United
States had Increased to 743,94l ,O6l pounds.
Vet IN ali this while, the most strenuous
efforts had been made to abolish our slave
system; a moral crusade was at first preach
ed, and then the Aboltionists allowed the
politicians to enlist them, making the geo.
aphical limitation of the peculiar instItu
ton the chief object of effort. A dozen
years have passed, and what has this polite
al action ACCOMPLISHED! The cotton plant
ers, instead of being crippled, were able in
the year ending June, 1853, to export l., H.
| 57O,37O pounds of cotton, besides supplying
400 600 900 for home consumption. The
present year, instead of finding slavery de-
crert, sees it, stronger than ever, having,
! by the establishment of the principle embod-
I Mt L
ed all the old barriers to it's extension, and
beholds it already expanded widely enough
for the profitable employment of the slave
| population, with all its natural increase for
hundred years to come.
| Cotton indeed has ever been King in tile
| United States. It elected each of our Pre-
sidents save the elder Adams. 1t has con-
trolled every Legislative movement In the
country; the national bank, protective tariff,
internal improvements, and all those once
leading measures that fell under the ban of
ultra Southern statesmen. Finding itsell
cramped, first of all Louisiana was purchas-
ed, and then Florida. Texas was annexed
because the Cotton King wanted more elbow
room. Mexico disappearing, we whipped
her, and further satisfied Cotton by annex
ing California, then by buying the Gadsden
territory. In 1850. Cotton made compro-
mise with the North, all to the advantage OF
the former. She imposed the fugitive slave
law upon the North, and the general govern
ment sees that it is executed. Last of all,
Cotton did away with the old Missouri CON-
promise, and opened up Kansas, Nebraska,
and all that Western domain, to a conten-
ton between North and South. Do not
these facts demonstrate that Cotton is King
in the United States!
| How potent is its influence upon other
countries we can best show by quotation
| from the London Economist. That paper
says: "Let any great social or physical con-
vulsiou visit the United States, and England
would feel the shock from Lands End to
John o. Greats. The lives of nearly two
millions of our (England) countymen are
dependent upon the cotton crops of America;
| their destiny may be said, without any kind
of hyperbole, to hang upon thread. Should
any dire calamity befal the land of cotton,
thousand OF merchant ships would rot idly in
dock; ten thousand mills must stop their
busy looms; two millions mouths would
starve for lack of bread to feed them" Says
Blackwood'e Magazine, in speaking of the
cultivation of cotton in the United States:
"With its increased growth has sprung up
that mercantile navy which now waves its
stripes and stars over every sea, and that
| American influence which has placed the
internal peace-we may say the subsistence
of millions in every manufacturing country
iii Europe-within the power of an oligarchy
OF plantere.''