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James H. Hammond
E pluribus unum, the motto of the United States, meaning "One out of many," meant
little during the early years of the republic. The original and newly admitted states had coalesced into
two antagonistic blocs. The Northern states were populous; their economies were diversified and based
upon free-hold farming and salaried labor. The South, by contrast, depended upon black slave labor, and
its wealth was based upon agricultural exports, chief among them being cotton and tobacco. In the 1790s,
the two regions had been approximately equal in population, and thus in political power. The growth of
population in the Northern states, however, through both immigration and natural increase, had threatened
that political balance, and the South had come to rely increasingly upon maintaining its equality with
Northerners in the Senate. This meant that the number of Southern and Northern territories gaining statehood
had to remain equal. Minnesota and Kansas were ready for admission in 1858, and a struggle had broke out
over the question of whether Kansas would gain statehood as a free or slave state. In the course of Senate
debate, William Seward of New York had predicted that the Southern bloc would lose its political power
and would be ruled like conquered territory by the North. James Hammond of South Carolina arose the next
day to speak in rebuttal of Seward. His speech, known ever since as "Cotton Is King," was a
clear and defiant portrayal of the differences that separated the North and South.
He accepted that proposition that the Northern and the Southern states were virtually two different nations
already, and proceeded to enumerate the strengths of the South. Central among these was the mercantilist
proposition that the South enjoyed a favorable balance of trade that not only enriched it, but made other
countries dependent upon it for raw materials. He asserted that the Southern planters could topple the
economies of the Western world simply by cutting off the supply of cotton required by their textile mills,
declaring "Cotton is king!" It may have seemed so at the time, since the appetite of the manufacturing
nations for cotton had been expanding rapidly and steadily for several years. Hammond must have known,
however, as others knew, that England, the world’s greatest importer of raw cotton, was already attempting
to stimulate the production of export cotton in Egypt and India. One of the forces driving the Southern
states to seek the admission of new slave states was a desire to continue to expand Southern cotton production
so that an inability to continue to meet increasing demands would not lead to higher cotton prices. Such
a rise in price could, and eventually did, lead to the development of cotton-raising in other areas and
the loss by the South of its virtual monopoly of the material.
Under the circumstances, Hammond’s speech was as ringing a defense of the South as anyone could expect.
He asserted that the South formed a unique society—today we might call it a culture—and that governments
had no right to try to shape societies. Societies created governments, he said, not the other way around,
and the members of one society should not presume to judge the institutions of another. Hammond’s speech
in many ways foreshadowed "cultural relativism," a proposition that would be invoked by other
threatened minorities in years to come.
Wealth is defined differently by every individual, society, nation, and culture. According to Senator
Hammond’s speech, what constitutes national wealth in 1858? What importance does he place on the South’s
production of cotton? As a prominent member of the proud slave-owning elite, how does he describe Southern
society to the United States Senate? How does he defend the institution of chattel slavery?
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