The Lower Mississippi Valley Cotton Frontier

The mechanization of the textile industry in Britain created growing world demand for cotton. The world cotton market expanded dramatically and continuously throughout the first part of the nineteenth century as this industrial raw material became the leading product in international trade.¹ The U.S. South soon emerged as the world’s primary supplier of raw cotton. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton spread rapidly across the South and revitalized slavery. At its height, the Cotton Belt stretched from the Carolinas to Texas. From the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1860,