The society of the South in the early republic

“This unfortunate condition of the planters of the South has not been entirely the result of natural causes. The present crisis under which they labor, and which has been brought about by that unerring law that regulates the exchangeable commodities of all the commercial world, most clearly demonstrates that the culture of cotton as the great staple of our country, and the chief source of our national and individual wealth, engendered an inordinate eagerness to devote all the available agricultural labor of the South to its production; and the large surplus of which we now complain, the rapid accumulation of a few brief years, also conclusively demonstrates that the profits realized from its cultivation far out-stripped and defied the competition of any other agricultural staple.”

-Source: James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow, De Bow’s Review, Volume 1, Issue 3, University of Michigan, 1846