This thoughtful study traces the impact of southern cotton on most of the important facets of life in antebellum America, including employment, international relations, agriculture, shipping, the U.S. economy, Native American relations, and the subjugation of humans. This one plant fashioned the...

Williams applies an economic analysis to the problems black Americans have faced in the past and present to show that free-market resource allocation, as opposed to political allocation, is in the best interests of minorities. - Jacket

Slavery in the making of The Constitution -- The engine of American growth, 1787-1861 -- The north: for whites only, 1800-1865 -- King cotton buys a war -- The racial divide and cotton labor, 1865-1930 -- Cotton without slaves, 1865-1930