The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States 1853-1861

About this book

Frederick Law Olmsted (18221903) is best known for designing parks in Manhattan Brooklyn Chicago Boston and the grounds of the Capitol in Washington. But before he embarked upon his career as the nations foremost landscape architect he was a correspondent for theNew York Times and it was under its auspices that he journeyed through the slave states in the 1850s. His day-by-day observationsincluding intimate accounts of the daily lives of masters and slaves the operation of the plantation system and the pernicious effects of slavery on all classes of society black and whitewere largely collected in The Cotton Kingdom. Published in 1861 just as the Southern states were storming out of the Union it has been hailed ever since as singularly fair and authentic an unparalleled account of Americas "peculiar institution."