KINGCOTTON

King Cotton

King Cotton was a slogan used by Confederates to support secession from the United States by arguing that cotton exports would make an independent Confederate States of America economically prosperous, ruin the textile industry of New England, and—most important—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy in the Civil War because their industrial economy depended on cotton textiles. The slogan was successful in mobilizing support: by February 1861, the seven states whose economies were based on cotton plantations had all seceded and formed the Confederacy. While the cotton south seceded, the other eight slave states remained in the Union.

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