The Cotton Kingdom Quotes

“and slaves thus get a fictitious value like stocks “in a corner.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861

“Food and shelter. Therewith should a man be content. But my perverse nature will not be content: will be wishing things were otherwise. They say this uneasiness — this passion for change — is a peculiarity of our diseased Northern nature. The Southern man finds Providence in all that is: Satan in all that might be.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861

“if he had been born a free man, would be no better employed than he is here; but, in that case, where is the advantage? Certainly not in the economy of the arrangement. And if he were self-dependent, if, especially, he had to provide for the present and future of those he loved, and was able to do so, would he not necessarily live a happier, stronger, better, and more respectable man?”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861

“there are millions of acres of land yet untouched, which if leveed and drained and fenced, and well cultivated, might be made to produce with good luck seven or more bales to the hand. It would cost comparatively little to accomplish it — one lucky crop would repay all the outlay for land and improvements — if it were not for “the hands.” The supply of hands is limited. It does not increase in the ratio of the increase of the cotton demand.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861

“and the purpose of the more prudent and conservative men, now engaged in the attempt to establish a new government in the South, was for a long time simply to obtain an advantage for what was talked of as “reconstruction;” namely, a process of change in the form and rules of our government that would disqualify us of the Free States from offering any resistance to whatever was demanded of our government, for the end in”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861