Fair to Middlin': The Antebellum Cotton Trade of the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee River Valley

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference for the 19th century cotton industry
Review: This book is unique in its subject matter. It helps today's reader understand the importance of the entire cotton production, trade, and manufacture.

Ms. Willoughby writes that the cotton trade's impact rippled over many other segments of the national economy and she quotes from another writer that this fiber has been called the most significant ingredient in the economic life of the whole nation [United States] before 1860.

The book describes the connection of cotton to currency and to banking and shows in detail how the banking system was vastly different from our present financial institutions.

The author stresses that much of the cotton business depended on the reputaions of individual men from the planter to the final purchaser and she gives short biographical descriptions of many key individuals.

Transportation facilities were vital to the moving of the cotton from the farm or plantation to the mill. The book describes the importance of vessels and shipping in every phase of the process and also the part that the early railroads played in making important changes in the entire ecomomy.

I would give this book a 10.