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History of the United States I / Unit 12   USH1 1653 short lesson, about 20 seconds

Cotton Is King

Captions available

The idea

The South Carolina politician James Hammond declared that cotton is king, confident that the North could never threaten the South.

In practice

About eighty percent of the world's cotton supply produced in the United States between eighteen twenty and eighteen sixty.

Where people slip

Roughly seventy-five percent of American cotton was exported, nearly all of it to Great Britain.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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