It probably was cotton, after all.

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wausaubob

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The Historical Atlas of the Civil War, John MacDonald, Chartwell Books, Inc, New York 2009. There is a little map on page 21 that illustrates the distribution of the vote on secession. In western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, northern Alabama, and the Red River area of Texas, areas in which cotton was not dominant, the popular support for secession was weak. This is consistent with there being substantial resistance to secession in Kentucky and Missouri, that only needed some support from loyalist forces to hold the state in the United States. The agricultural map on p. 47 confirms the hypothesis. The corn, wheat and even tobacco areas of the south were selling to a domestic market. They wanted to remain connected to the US. The sugar growers wanted slavery, but they also were selling to the US market.
It was the last several years of the cotton boom, especially after the end of the Crimean War, and the intense development of the world market for English textiles, that created the money and the incentive to separate the cotton belt from the US.
With the moderators permission, I could expand the idea, but I am not into arguing.
 
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