Selections from The Cotton Kingdom by Frederick Law Olmsted
First Edition ©2014
Although Frederick Law Olmsted is best remembered as a premier landscape architect, it is The Cotton Kingdom that historians regard as an equally significant part of his legacy. In this volume, John C. Inscoe makes Olmsted’s classic work accessible to student audiences for the first time.
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Although Frederick Law Olmsted is best remembered as a premier landscape architect, it is The Cotton Kingdom that historians regard as an equally significant part of his legacy. In this volume, John C. Inscoe makes Olmsted’s classic work accessible to student audiences for the first time. The Introduction places Olmsted’s personal history in the broader context of sectional conflict, and the selections are organized chronologically and geographically to reveal the extent of Olmsted’s travels and his appreciation of the multiplicity of the antebellum Southern experience. A chronology, questions to consider, and bibliography enrich students’ understanding of the conflicts over slavery in the critical decade of the 1850s.
This excellent abridgement of Olmsted’s The Cotton Kingdom makes the work accessible and suitable for classroom use, possibly for the first time. I know of no other edition of Olmsted’s book that effectively presents it in a form for undergraduate courses.
Mark Elliott, University of North Carolina at GreensboroInscoe has done a fabulous job in his abridgement of The Cotton Kingdom. This volume will find a place in U.S. survey courses and in courses on the Civil War era and the antebellum South. It is a welcome addition to the Bedford Series in History and Culture.
K. Stephen Prince, University of South FloridaThe Introduction does an exemplary job of situating Olmsted’s accounts in the sectional and international debate over slavery; this adds greatly to the analytical possibilities for teaching with the volume.
Matthew Mason, Brigham Young UniversityThis volume is long overdue. Inscoe has produced a first-rate abridgement of a classic account of the South on the eve of Civil War.
John Mayfield, Samford UniversityInscoe’s abridgement of The Cotton Kingdom provides the variety of description and analysis of Southern peoples and institutions found in Olmsted’s original publication in a manageable format for undergraduates. Covering the Upper, Gulf Coast, and Cotton Souths, the commentaries included will be useful for discussions of both the multiplicity of the antebellum Southern experience as well as the internal debates and struggles over the institution of slavery in the critical decade of the 1850s.
Jessica Cannon, University of Central Missouri
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Introduction: A Connecticut Yankee in King Cotton’s Court
Eyewitnesses to Southern Slavery
Olmsted’s Formative Years
Targeting the South
Traveling the South
Writing the South
Assessing the South
Olmsted’s Later Life and Career
PART TWO
Selections from The Cotton Kingdom
Introduction: "The Present Crisis"
Chapter 1: Virginia and the Carolinas
1. Washington, D.C.
2. To Richmond by Train
3. Black Richmond
4. Virginia’s Slave Trade
5. Visit to a Virginia Farm
6. Discussion of Slave States and Slave Labor|
7. Conversation with a White Tobacco Farmer
8. Slaves’ Work Ethic
9. Slave Lumbermen in the Great Dismal Swamp
10. North Carolina’s Turpentine Industry
11. North Carolina’s Slave Economy and Backward Culture
12. From Wilmington to Charleston
13. Northern Hay vs. Southern Cotton
14. Conversation with a Free Black Tobacco Farmer
Chapter 2: Georgia and Alabama
15. Traveling through Coastal Georgia
16. Visit to a Rice Plantation
17. The "Watchman"
18. The Task System and Rice Cultivation
19. Portrait of an Overseer
20. Slaves as Sellers and Thieves
21. Moving toward Freedom
22. Plantation Religion
23. A Bi-Racial Sunday Service
24. From Savannah to Columbus
25. Steamboat from Montgomery to Mobile
26. Conversation with a Red River "Cotton Man"
27. A Crew of Slaves and Irishmen
28. Mobile
Chapter 3: Louisiana
29. By Boat and Train to New Orleans
30. Touring New Orleans
31. Quadroon Society
32. The "Licentious" South
33. Visit to a Sugar Plantation
34. The Economy of Sugar
35. Slaves and the "Grinding Season"
36. Poor White Neighbors
37. Conversation with William, a Slave
38. Up the Red River
39. Encounters with Uncle Tom’s Cabin
40. Inside a Poor Cotton Farm Household
41. "The Most Profitable Estate that I Visited"
42. Life in the Slave Quarters
43. Overseers and Drivers
44. The Religious Instruction of Slaves
45. The Economy of Cotton
Chapter 4: On to Texas and Back to Louisiana
46. On the Emigrant Road to Texas
47. Hotel Conversation with Six Texans
48. A Northern Transplant and Her Slaves
49. A Runaway Caught in Houston
50. Conversation with a Slave Trader in Opelousas
51. Louisiana Class Distinctions and Creoles
52. Contrasting New York Farmers and Louisiana Planters
Chapter 5: The Back Country
53. Discussions of Mexico and Runaway Slaves
54. A Slaveholding Abolitionist Host
55. Moving into Alabama Hill Country
56. Hunting Dogs and Their Prey
57. Visit with a Tennessee "Squire"
58. Carolina Highlanders’ Critique of Slavery
59. With Slaves and Without: Two Mountain Farms Compared
Appendixes
A Cotton Kingdom Chronology (1822-1861)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index
Authors
Frederick Law Olmsted
John C. Inscoe
John C. Inscoe (Ph.D, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Albert B. Saye Professor of History and University Professor at the University of Georgia, where he specializes in the history of the American South. Among his numerous publications are Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina; Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South; Writing the South through the Self: Explorations in Southern Autobiography; and works edited or co-edited on Georgia race relations, Appalachians and race in the nineteenth century, southern Unionists during the Civil War, and Confederation nationalism and identity. He is editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia and former editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly.
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