Data Literacy for Social Studies, Pounds of Cotton Used for Cotton Goods, Union vs. Confederacy, 1860

In 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond famously declared in a speech to the U.S. Senate that "Cotton is King." The statement reflected a common belief among Southerners that both the North's and Great Britain's dependence on Southern cotton would prove advantageous in a war between North and South, allowing them to cripple the Northern economy and win British support for their cause. As this bar graph we created from 1860 U.S. Census data illustrates, Union factories were indeed highly dependent on Southern cotton, turning hundreds of millions of pounds of it into cotton goods on the eve of the war. However, the graph also illustrates the relative strength of the Union's textile industry, which would be of critical importance during the war, when they continued to produce cotton textiles while also branching out to woolen and silk goods to support the military and civilians alike. Additionally, Great Britain was able to shift its dependence on raw cotton to India, Brazil, and Egypt, weakening any leverage the South might have had for winning their support in the war. The spreadsheets found here include the bar graph, along with the original data table and a recreated table used to create the graph.