https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/empire-of-cotton/383660/

“My family’s not from the south. We didn’t even come to this country until 1900. We had nothing to do with that.”

«By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.»