| By positioning economic, political, and intellectual leaders of the Cotton South within a broader global context, this dissertation applies a new approach to fundamental questions in early United States history: What were the processes and limits of nationalism and sectionalism in the early Republic? What forces acted to reinforce or challenge the novel system of federalism created in 1787? Why did leaders in the Deep South ultimately come to believe that secession from that system was the only way to protect their rights and interests? How did these same individuals who extolled the virtues of liberty come unabashedly to justify and defend an institution of slavery opposed to the principles they claimed to cherish in 1776 and again in 1861? This dissertation suggests that a deep appreciation of global forces, and especially the transatlantic cotton trade, is fundamental for answering these questions.; As commercially minded "internationalists," disciples of free trade thought, and practitioners of an emerging scientific racism, leaders in the Cotton South aggressively engaged the modern world around them. The region's particular commitment to international trade, especially with Great Britain, created tensions within national party politics and the federal system in which politicians operated. Debates over how to respond to European hostilities in the 1790s, Jefferson's Embargo, the War of 1812, protective tariffs, the "American System," internal improvements, African Colonization, navigation laws, Free Black Port Acts, and slavery's expansion westward informed national and sectional identities. A long process of domestic and international negotiations over these issues ultimately led elites in the Deep South to envision a life outside of the Federal Union.; In the 1850s, with slavery increasingly under attack within the Union, cotton growers and slaveholders in the Deep South believed that King Cotton might rule the Atlantic. The secession movement that began in the Cotton South resulted not only from a defensive or irrational fear of Black Republicanism but also from the calculation that the Cotton South and slavery would prosper within the wider world on its own terms. |
