Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

“ [82] like the man who purchased the elephant-you will find it rather difficult to decide what you will do with the animal.”

Some days later, the same speaker, in a few sentences, revealed the mainspring of the hopes of success in their treasonable work, entertained by the conspirators. It was the cotton crop of the planting coast States, upon which England, France, and the States north of the Potomac, chiefly depended for the supply of their mills. For fifty years the orators and publicists of the Cotton-growing States had proclaimed the power of cotton in the preservation of peace between the United States and Great Britain, because of the commanding influence of the commercial and manufacturing interests in the politics of the latter country, to which American cotton had become almost an indispensable commodity. It had, indeed, become a power, both social and political, yet not so absolutely omnipotent as the conspirators believed it to be. So palpable was its commercial importance, however, and so evident was it that the mills of Europe, and those of the Free-labor States in America, with their five millions of spindles, were, and must continue to be, mostly dependent upon the product of only an inconsiderable portion of ten of the States of our Republic, that its puissance was generally conceded. In the Senate of the United States, in March, 1858, Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, said, exultingly:--“You dare not make war upon Cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws, as usual, the Fall before last, on the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that Cotton is supreme?”

Cotton is King! shouted the great land and slave holders of the Gulf States, whose fields were hoary with his bounteous gifts, when they thought of rebellion, and revolution, and independent empire; for they believed that his scepter had made England and France their dependents, and that they must necessarily be the allies of the cotton-growers, in the event of war.

Cotton is King! echoed back submissively the spindles of Old and New England.

a Old Cotton will pleasantly reign
     When other kings painfully fall,
And ever and ever remain
     The mightiest monarch of all,

sang an American bard¹ years before; and now, a Senator (Wigfall) of the Republic, with words of treason falling from his lips, like jagged hail, in the very sanctuary where loyalty should be adored exclaimed:--“I say that Cotton is King, and that he waves his scepter, not only over these thirty-three States, but over the Island of Great Britain and over Continental Europe; and that there is no crowned head upon that island, or upon the continent, that does not bend the knee in fealty, and acknowledge allegiance to that monarch. There are five millions of people in Great Britain who live upon cotton. You may make a short crop of grain, and it will never affect them; but you may cram their granaries to bursting; you may cram them ”