pt. 1: Slavery in the making of the Constitution. The silent issue at the Constitutional Convention
pt. 2: The engine of American growth, 1787-1861. Birth of an obsession
Land expansion and white migration to the Old Southwest
The movement of slaves to the cotton states
The business of cotton
The roots of war
pt. 3: The north: for whites only, 1800-1865. Being free and black in the North
The colonial North
Race moves west
Tocqueville on slavery, race, and money in America
pt. 4: King Cotton buys a war. Cultivating a crop, cultivating a strategy
Great Britain and the Civil War
Cotton and Confederate finance
Procuring arms
Cotton trading in the United States
Cotton and the freedman
pt. 5: The racial divide and cotton labor, 1865-1930. New era, old problems
Ruling the freedmen in the cotton fields
Reconstruction meets reality
The black hand on the cotton boll
From cotton field to urban ghetto : the Chicago experience
pt. 6: Cotton without slaves, 1865-1930. King Cotton expands
The controlling laws of cotton finance
The delta plantation : labor and land
The planter experience in the twentieth century
The long-awaited mechanical cotton picker
The abdication of King Cotton.