Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power

Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power. By Gene Dattel. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009. xiv, 416 pp. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-56663-747-3.)

Gene Dattel argues that the American experience until the 1930s can be explained by a resource endowment suited for cotton, the cotton gin, African American slavery, and Americans' inordinate passion for wealth. Americans' moral strictures were not suited to resist the lure of "King Cotton." No group of Americans escapes Dattel 's critical moral gaze. Antebellum and posthellum southerners, northerners, abolitionists, and Reconstructionists all suffered from the moral shortfalls that debilitated the nation. Never mind that during this same period the United States was a beacon of hope for millions of oppressed people from the rest of the world. The United States fell short of a high moral calling.

The timing of the...