page_title: History of cotton
section_title: Pre–Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: History of cotton / United States of America / Pre–Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: Oklahoma Cotton Field." Overseer and Negro cottonpickers, ca. 1897--98.
context_page_description: The history of cotton can be traced to domestication. Cotton played an important role in the history of India, the British Empire, and the United States, and continues to be an important crop and commodity.
  The history of the domestication of cotton is very complex and is not known exactly. Several isolated civilizations in both the Old and New World independently domesticated and converted cotton into fabric. All the same tools were invented to work it also, including combs, bows, hand spindles, and primitive looms.
context_section_description: Anglo-French warfare in the early 1790s restricted access to continental Europe, causing the United States to become an important—and temporarily the largest—consumer for British cotton goods. In 1791, U.S. cotton production was small, at only 900 thousand kilograms (2000 thousand pounds). Several factors contributed to the growth of the cotton industry in the U.S.: the increasing British demand; innovations in spinning, weaving, and steam power; inexpensive land; and a slave labour force. The modern cotton gin, invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, enormously grew the American cotton industry, which was previously limited by the speed of manual removal of seeds from the fibre, and helped cotton to surpass tobacco as the primary cash crop of the South. By 1801 the annual production of cotton had reached over 22 million kilograms (48.5 million pounds), and by the early 1830s the United States produced the majority of the world's cotton. Cotton also exceeded the value of all other United States exports combined. The need for fertile land conducive to its cultivation lead to the expansion of slavery in the United States and an early 19th-century land rush known as Alabama Fever.
  Cultivation of cotton using black slaves brought huge profits to the owners of large plantations, making them some of the wealthiest men in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. In the non-slave-owning states, farms rarely grew larger than what could be cultivated by one family due to scarcity of farm workers. In the slave states, owners of farms could buy many slaves and thus cultivate large areas of land. By the 1850s, slaves made up 50% of the population of the main cotton states: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Slaves were the most important asset in cotton cultivation, and their sale brought profits to slaveowners outside of cotton-cultivating areas. Thus, the cotton industry contributed significantly to the Southern upper class's support of slavery. Although the Southern small-farm owners did not grow cotton due to its lack of short-term profitability, they were still supportive of the system in the hopes of one day owning slaves.
  Cotton's central place in the national economy and its international importance led Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina to make a famous boast in 1858 about King Cotton:
  Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet... What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?... England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.
  Cotton diplomacy, the idea that cotton would cause Britain and France to intervene in the Civil War, was unsuccessful. It was thought that the Civil War caused the Lancashire Cotton Famine, a period between 1861–1865 of depression in the British cotton industry, by blocking off American raw cotton. Some, however, suggest that the Cotton Famine was mostly due to overproduction and price inflation caused by an expectation of future shortage.
  Prior to the Civil War, Lancashire companies issued surveys to find new cotton-growing countries if the Civil War were to occur and reduce American exports. India was deemed to be the country capable of growing the necessary amounts. Indeed, it helped fill the gap during the war, making up only 31% of British cotton imports in 1861, but 90% in 1862 and 67% in 1864.
caption: Picking cotton in Oklahoma in the 1890s
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