Indigo
production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the
new tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most other
investments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as the
end of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves into
other forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that I
am principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, I
would not in twelve months hence be possessed of a single one as a slave.
I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome
species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[1] But at
that very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples was
on the point of transforming the slaveholders' prospects.
[Footnote 1: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, 1898, pp. 14, 15.]
For centuries cotton had been among the world's materials for cloth,
though the dearth of supply kept it in smaller use than wool or flax. This
continued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient were
considerably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the colonies
of Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South American
coast now known as Guiana.
Pages:
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273