The impact of cotton and slavery in the 19th century American South was so dramatic and enduring that neither the region nor the nation has yet escaped from the influence of that era of regional prominence. This book examines the historical background, the origins of the economic structure and institutions of the Cotton South, and the ways in which they evolved and changed over the course of the 19th century. Professor Wright perceives an essential unity to the century as a whole and argues that before and after the Civil War the pace of world cotton demand was the principal dynamic force. 
Formal economic analysis is combined with efforts to place the institution of slavery in historical perspective. Within this framework the author reassesses some of the standard questions of Southern history: the profitability of slavery before the Civil War, the overproduction of cotton after the Civil War, the effects of slavery on regional progress, and the causes of the war. 
This study goes beyond economic history narrowly defined, pursuing the same logic into the realm of class relationships and political behavior. A new "economic interpretation" of Southern political behavior and the Civil War is proposed, one which avoids the oversimplifications and falsities of earlier interpretations.