The legacy of King Cotton

[Dodd]

Overlay of two maps:

The Red/blue voting in this year's presi election and 1860 cotton production.


http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008...

[Jacob]

When I was looking at the Georgia map after the election, I was surprised by that arc of blue stretching from Augusta and Savannah in the East to Columbus in the West. Even most interesting is the fact that arc continued through Alabama (and apparently through the Carolinas as well but I didn't see that last time). The really interesting thing is that most of those counties are very rural.

You want to know the reason for that line? In Georgia, north of that arc is a really dense red clay that's a bitch to till (believe me I tried to dig a garden in the northwest corner once and it took me hours to just turn over a 10x5 foot section). South of the arc (where I live) the soil is really sandy and was swampy and malarial until about the time my great-grandfather in at the turn of the century. That arc is where the best soil in the state is and would have been where the biggest plantations were. Those counties are still often close to being a majority black.

Sadly, my county was solidly in the red.

The good news is that my house is surrounded by cotton fields. Maybe that means my county will turn blue in 100 years.

[Dodd]

I'm constantly surprised at how closely our history dogs us even when we aren't aware that it's right on our heels.