Cotton was not the nation’s only agribusiness before the Civil War. The tobacco,
rice, sugar, livestock, lumbering, and wheat industries accounted for more dollar income
than cotton, but not one of them alone before 1860, or even 1900, approached the dollar
value of cotton. Each of these commodities involved hundreds of middlemen for every
single producer, creating an intricate web of trade and commerce that stretched across
North America to Europe. The cotton plantation employing slave labor marked only the
first stage in the business of producing, marketing, and distributing cotton products.