The Cotton Kingdom [Vol 2 only] -- A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States Based Upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author by Olmsted, Frederick Law - 1861

New York: Mason Brothers. Very Good. 1861. First Edition. Hardcover. iv, 404 pages; Contents clean and secure in original publisher's binding of green diced cloth with gilt lettering at spine. Minor wear to cloth at spine ends, corners very slightly rounded, not worn. This book bears an old former owner's name on ffep "E. Gaylord", a Colby College "withdrawn" stamp on copyright page and a Colby College stamp on tp. A nice example of this first edition of Olmsted's The Cotton Kingdom, a Condensation of his three separately published journeys, perhaps the most detailed study of the antebellum South. Howes O-76; Sabin 57240 Interested in the slave economy, he was commissioned by the New York Daily Times (now The New York Times) to embark on an extensive research journey through the American South and Texas from 1852 to 1857. His dispatches to the Times were collected into three volumes -- A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), A Journey Through Texas (1857), A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853-4 (1860). These vivid first-person accounts of the antebellum South were abridged into the two-volume set "The Cotton Kingdom", Volume 2 of which is offerred here. In the introduction, Olmsted stated his views on the effect of slavery on the economy and social conditions of the southern states: " My own observation of the real condition of the people of our Slave States, gave me ... an impression that the cotton monopoly in some way did them more harm than good..." Olmsted argued that slavery had made the slave states inefficient (a set amount of work took 4 times as long in Virginia as in the North) and backward both economically and socially. Olmsted thought that the lack of a Southern white middle class and the general poverty of lower-class whites prevented the development of many civil amenities which were taken for granted in the North. .