Research Blog, King Cotton and his Retainers, WOodman

“In ’63 and ’64, New Orleans could boast of more cotton factors than cotton. The principal business was in the hands of merchants from the north, who had established themselves in the city soon after its occupation by northern forces. Nearly all coton sent to the market was from plantations leased by northern men, or from purchases made of planters by the northern speculators. The patronage naturally fell into the hands of the new possessors of the soil, and left the old merchants to pine in solitude. The old factors, most of them southern men, who could boast of ten or twenty years’s experience, saw their business pass into the hands of men whose arrival in New Orleans was subsequenmt to that of gernal butler.” Camp-fire and Cotton-field: southern adventure in the time of war(New York 1865). This is an article about how the SOuth lost their cotton production to the NOrth at the end of the Civil War. AFter decades of plantations and cotton production, Northerners came into New Orleans and took over the production. Since the south was in so much debt, when NOrtherners came with a lot of money they easily bought out their southern competition. They would take the SOuth's land in return for paying their mass amount of debt, in this way the SOuth lost their debt but also their main source of income. Their plans of dealig cotton directly to Europe were shattered now that they didnt even have cotton production anymore. Keep in mind that this article seems to paint a positive picture of the SOUth loosing cotton production because it a New York article from the time when the North was winning the Civil War.