
The Cotton Kingdom
A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, 1853-1861
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Narrated by:
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John Lescault
In 1853, Frederick Law Olmsted was working for the New York Times when he journeyed to the southern slave states and wrote one of the most important pro-abolition discourses.
The Cotton Kingdom recounts his daily observations of the curse of slavery: the poverty it brought to both black and white people, the inadequacies of the plantation system, and the economic consequences and problems associated with America’s most “peculiar institution.”
Disproving the opinion that “cotton is king”, Olmsted examined the huge differences between the economies of the northern and southern states, contrasting the more successful, wealthy, and progressive North with the South, which was stubbornly convinced of the necessity of slavery.
Hailed as one of the most convincing and influential antislavery arguments, Olmsted’s work was widely praised, with London’s Westminster Review declaring, “it is impossible to resist his accumulated evidence.”
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American history as I never heard it before.
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Cotton kingdom
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I agree with the last reviewer that Lescault’s sometimes staccato narration takes getting used to. And that in the end it is a brilliant framing. Olmsted cloaks his own views as he lets the people he meets speak for themselves. So a certain dry irony of required. Occasionally Lescault lets Olmsted’s evident anger comes through.
Olmsted ranges from the Carolinas through Louisiana to Texas and back, riding from plantation to plantation. His hilarious descriptions of appalling accommodations prick the ‘Gone with the wind’ imagining of how life was lived. His day time tours of cotton plantations explain the economic of cotton in detail - maybe too much detail for some. More broadly, he has much to say about the impact of slavery on the south - on the labor market, on the policing, on the lawlessness - in ways that inform today’s politics.
Olmsted went in to build Central Park in New York!
Extensive use of the N-word (although not by Olmsted) if you are triggered.
Fascinating
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Fascinating History
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It took several chapters before I became comfortable with the narrator's style; but eventually became convinced of the genius of his method of presentation.
Essential reading in light of today's struggle for racial justice in the United States, 160 years after its publication.
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A special word for the narrator, John Lescault. He gives a brilliant performance. He does so many difference voices and accents, all quite entertaining. I assume his narration of Olmstead is Lescault's real voice.
A special warning: This book probably sets the record for the "F Bomb". Nearly every character uses it every time referring to a black person, which is all the time. Olmstead himself uses the term "negro", but he doesn't flinch from recording the southern vernacular. I hope the reader/listener will accept the terminology in the spirit in which it is recorded by Olmstead.
UNDERAPPRECIATED CLASSIC
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A Surreal Exercise in Time Travel
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