Cotton was the most important aspect of the southern economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
By the start of the war, the South was producing 75 percent of the world's cotton and creating more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. Enslaved workers represented Southern planters' most significant investment—and the bulk of their wealth.
By the early 1800s, cotton emerged as the South's major cash crop—a good produced for commercial value instead of for use by the owner. Cotton quickly eclipsed tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance. Printed depicting enslaved people using the cotton gin.
Learn more about cotton in southern economy here: