The writer distorts history by repeating the King Cotton myth.
Here’s the LTE’s specific error: “Slavery was the economic engine of the South, crowning King Cotton and creating a gilded age for the plantation owners who were reaping millions year after year.”
In fact, cotton represented only about 5 to 6 percent of the Southern economy before the war. Neither it, nor slavery was the economic engine of anything.
https://www.aier.org/article/statistical-errors-reparations-agenda
I’m no fan of the Lost Cause narrative which the LTE deplores, but let’s not pollute history in the name of purifying it, as the letter does.
There was a considerable Reconciliation movement after the Civil War. Surviving veterans of both sides, black and white, gathered to march in huge parades in cities all across the country, typically in full military regalia. Public speakers ostentatiously paid honor to former foes with a determined spirit to promote a national healing.
According to an inscription near it’s base, our own Johnny Reb monument was erected to commemorate one of the last of these Reconciliation reunions.
That’s a far better legacy than a fetishized preoccupation with the evils of slavery, some of them quite false.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
…”fetishized preoccupation with the evils of slavery”…
Are you saying that slavery was NOT evil, in and of itself?
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RE: “Are you saying that slavery was NOT evil, in and of itself?”
No.
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Fooled me. But I’ll take you at your word.
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RE: “Fooled me. But I’ll take you at your word.”
Why take me at my word?
Had I wanted to say, or even suggest, that slavery is less than evil I could have done so. Since I didn’t, there is no reason to make assumptions about it.
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Sorry, Mr. Roberts, but I interpreted your comment …”fetishized preoccupation with the evils of slavery”… to indicate the possibility that slavery in and of itself was NOT evil. I asked for clarification and all you provided was a one word answer, and less than emphatic, in my view.
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Between your two posts on the subject, I think you’ve done a decent job illustrating that cotton wasn’t quite the cash crop it’s portrayed to be. But for what purpose? I’m still unclear what your whole thesis is–that they fought solely to uphold white supremacy? That’s not better.
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RE: “But for what purpose?”
As stated: Let’s not pollute history in the name of purifying it.
I believe this happens on both sides of the discussion. Those who glorify Lost Cause thinking typically refuse to see slavery as central to the Civil War, but those who downplay the significance of states rights as a motivating issue for the conflict typically refuse to concede that it was a primary motive, despite historical documentation of that fact.
My usual recommendation on the subject has two parts:
Watch the videos made of Civil War veterans at YouTube to learn that story as told by those who lived it.
Almost everything else is interpretation, not history.
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I actually think I agree with your idea that the attempts to “purify” history does occur on both sides.
And while the idea of state’s rights was instrumental to the Civil War, it was the state’s rights wrt to slavery that seems to be the cause. Especially when you consider some of the historical documentation that is often referred to.
Granted, my statement is interpretation based on the facts not in question. But I believe it is a sensical interpretation based on the ideas on both sides of the discussion.
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RE: “I believe it is a sensical interpretation”
I don’t, for the reason that the interpretation makes uneccessary assumptions about the people of the time who cited states rights as the cause they supported, to the exclusion of slavery. Here’s an example of one such claim, by Confederate veteran Julius Howell who, as it happens, grew up in what is now Suffolk.
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Historical documentation proves otherwise. States that seceded put it plainly in their constitutions the reason they were seceding was to preserve state’s rights, and particularly, slavery. The interview, while interesting, is one man’s view. Documentation proves otherwise.
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How DARE they call cotton king. At the peak of the Southern slavery, tobacco was the cash crop.
And let’s not forget rice.
Cotton was indeed part of the rift between the North and South in that the British and New England wanted to feed their mills.
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Bringing up the other cash crops of the day is important. However, I ask this: Was it only cotton plantations that had slaves? Or did growers of other cash crops not use slave labor to maintain their crops?
That also goes to Mr. Roberts’ comment that slavery was not an economic driver in the South. However, without slavery, how would those plantations (farms) have done?
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RE: “How DARE they call cotton king. At the peak of the Southern slavery, tobacco was the cash crop.”
From the source I linked: “Cotton was by far the biggest item on the list of final goods and services, and, while its output varied year by year, it is probably reasonable to place slave-based goods [including tobacco and rice] in the mid to high single digits [of total GDP].”
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My great, great, +/-great uncle was a slaveholder and a small farmer in Georgia (somewhere in the hills of). He owned 3 slaves at the outbreak of the war. I doubt he was growing a big cash crop. Since at the time, most agricultural products were perishable and with no mass refrigerated transportation, they were consumed within 50 miles of home. I’ll bet his slaves’ contribution isn’t considered a slave-based good.
Now, John McCain’s family wealth (for example) came from 1000+ acres. You can bet they didn’t just grow food for themselves.
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Why do white supremacists spend so much energy trying to find something not evil about the Confederacy where slavery WAS the economic engine?
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RE: “slavery WAS the economic engine”
So you say, but scholars disagree. That’s the point.
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You answered your own question.
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