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Article: Cotton Kingdom
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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COTTON KINGDOM
COTTON KINGDOM
refers to the cotton-producing region of the southern United States up until the Civil War. As white settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas forced the original Native American inhabitants farther and farther west, they moved in and established plantations. The section remained indeliblytied to and controlled by plantation agriculture. From the Atlantic coast to Texas, tobacco, rice, and sugar were staple crops from 1800 to the 1860s. It was cotton production, however, that controlled life in the region.
The predominant feature of the Cotton Kingdom was the employment of slave labor. The societal structure of the area in the antebellum era was built ...