Cotton was the United States' most important export in the antebellum period. In the American South cotton was the essence of the economy. The businessmen who marketed the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee River valley's cotton overcame many handicaps. Transportation of the cotton to market relied on the waterway. This river system was the largest in the Southeast, but like the other southern river systems, it was usually not boatable in the dry summer months. Thus, the conduct of the cotton trade depended on the water level. / The most serious hindrance to the cotton entrepreneurs was the lack of adequate banking facilities. What few banks that operated there were woefully overextended and undercapitalized. Since the region lacked sufficient capital to finance the cotton trade, it depended on the money markets of London and New York. The laborious trail of credit that followed each cotton transaction extended from Europe via New York to the Apalachicola cotton factor and eventually to his planter client upriver. The financing of the cotton trade was further complicated by an uneven currency composed of a myriad of state bank notes of varying worth. / The advent of the railroad into the valley forever altered trade and transportation patterns. When the cotton producers no longer relied exclusively on river transportation, the economic entity that had centered on the river was broken up, and the port of Apalachicola declined. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-03, Section: A, page: 0782. / Major Professor: John Hebron Moore. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77978 |
| Contributors | Ware, Lynn Willoughby., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 242 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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