Relatively few books in economic history get read by the general public and fewer still get blurbs from the likes of Morgan Freeman, who does so for the book under review. Maybe books by Niall Ferguson—who, interestingly enough, also blurbs for Gene Dattel—but not too many others. More seriously, the fact that celebrities such as Freeman and Ferguson are reading and thinking about a book such as Cotton and Race in the Making of America is all to the good, for the book is as important as it is provocative.

Freeman, star of such movies as Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption, may not be an economic historian, but he captures the gist of Dattel's argument with enviable parsimony in his blurb, which appeared on Elephant Online, “[t]he Official Ivan R. Dee Weblog.” According to Freeman, “Gene Dattel's book tells the story of the irresistible power of cotton that changed the destiny of the nation—not just the region. America's material obsession blossomed in the cotton fields, where blacks were trapped. Racial hostility—both North and South—was the enabler. His book masterfully captures the history and its painful legacy.” Nicely put, but let me elaborate a bit: I'm a historian, after all.

Over the centuries, numerous scholars have attempted to discover and locate the emblematic theme or themes in American history, or, as a film star such as Freeman might put it, the “Rosebud” of our past. Various possibilities have been raised—individualism, freedom, materialism, capitalism, expansionism, and racism come immediately to mind—often in one or another combination. Although Dattel doesn't weigh in categorically on this meta question, he is clear about one thing: Whichever emblem we choose it is likely that that emblem was inextricably linked to, and underpinned and supported by cotton, at least in the one hundred fifty years between the early nineteenth century and the 1950s. Indeed, to Dattel, the fleecy staple insinuated itself into virtually every fiber of American life during that long period, and Cotton and Race in the Making of America can be seen as the author's brief for this case.

Dattel, who grew up in cotton country in the Mississippi delta and holds a J. D. from Vanderbilt, makes this case well in twenty-seven short, reader-friendly chapters divided into six more or less chronological parts. Cotton was of little consequence in the colonial period, so the author begins his story in the late eighteenth century. He begins not with Eli Whitney, the cotton gin, and all that—although he picks up such matters soon enough—but with a chapter on the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Why begin in this way? Because Dattel believes that the “silent” acquiescence on, and endorsement of slavery in the Constitution bought time for the peculiar institution, providing the fertile soil necessary for the cotton economy to take root. And take root it soon did—revivifying slavery, in so doing—once ginning problems were famously reduced, if not solved by Whitney et al.

If the profound role of cotton in American history has long been appreciated by economic historians, Dattel provides a real service in reminding a new generation just how profound cotton's role, in fact, was. Cotton accounted for 60 percent of America's exports on the eve of the Civil War, and was the country's biggest export from 1803 until 1937. Demand for cotton “made” the market for slaves in the antebellum period, and slaves constituted as much as 60 percent of the South's total wealth in 1860. Moreover, cotton's economic importance extended far beyond the South. The economies of other parts of the United States, particularly New England and the Middle Atlantic states, were tied closely to cotton (and slaves), as were those of Great Britain, France, and other European powers engaged in a major way in the manufacturing of cotton textiles. Dattel argues, in fact, that cotton was the first modern global industry, and that this industry qua industry could scarcely have arisen without the exploitation made possible by racial slavery.

And Dattel makes clear his belief that greed, avariciousness, and racism were sufficiently powerful forces in America—not just in the South—virtually to ensure that African Americans would remain tethered to cotton production long after emancipation. In his view, the political economic order established in America after the demise of slavery functioned, as both white southerners and white northerners intended, to keep African Americans down on the (southern) farm, as it were, chopping and picking cotton. Thus, the principal reason that as late as the First World War 90 percent of African Americans in the United States still lived in the South. This figure began to fall around that time as a result of the growth in demand for cheap, unskilled industrial labor in the North, but it was not really until the mechanical cotton picker became widespread in the 1950s that the tragic historical connection between cotton and race—more specifically, cotton and African Americans—receded into history. Even today, alas, the grim legacy of this connection remains.

Dattel traces this connection in its entirety in Cotton and Race in the Making of America. The book is intended for the general reader rather than for the specialist—the author employs journalistic rather scholarly citation protocols, for example—and economic historians will find Dattel's argument both familiar and perhaps a bit deterministic even for their hard-driving tastes. This said, in refreshing—and sharpening—our memories about the role of cotton and the enormity of slavery in American history, Dattel makes a valuable contribution indeed.