King Cotton was a slogan used during the American Civil War by the Confederacy (1860–61) to support secession from the United States, claiming that cotton exports would make an independent Confederate States of America economically prosperous, ruin the textile industry of New England, and—most importantly—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy in the Civil War because their industrial economy depended on cotton textiles. The slogan was successful in mobilizing support: by February 1861, the seven states whose economies were based on cotton plantations had all seceded and formed the Confederacy (C.S.A.). While the "cotton states" seceded, the other eight slave states remained in the Union. To demonstrate the power of King Cotton, Southern cotton merchants spontaneously refused to ship out their cotton in early 1861; it was not a government decision. By summer 1861, the Union blockade shut down over 95% of exports. Since the Europeans had large stockpiles of cotton, they were not immediately injured by the boycott; indeed the value of their stockpiles went up. For Britain to intervene meant war with the U.S. and a cutoff of food supplies, so it did not intervene. Consequently, the strategy proved a failure for the Confederacy — King Cotton did not help the new nation.
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