panel, the will make their way to the author s ten next door to that and will be happy to personalize and sign the books for you. our moderator is timis bell. during his 30-plus years as a journalist his has serve as writer, photographer, photo editor, pain designer, and shreddographyer. he researches and writes and photographs books on the civil war, civil rights history, and the gulf coast in 2007 he want inducted be usm communication and journalism hall of fame. i d like to thank all of you for coming. i was going to start the session off with the quote from another mississippi author, shelby foote. any understand offering this nation has to be based on an noning of the civil war. the civil war deoffendded us as what we are and it opened us to what we game, good and bad. it s necessary if you re going to understand the american character of the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the 19th 19th century. the crossroads of our being and a hell of a cros
because there weren t as many men around to chase them and that sort of thing, what happens to cotton production immediately that had made the south of rich and in one sense made the war start. correct me on this stuff, but with slaves gone i m assuming and with a lot of the white men owners gone, i m i m assuming the cotton production couldn t do very well and i m wondering how what ever happened on the plantation during the civil war, of course a lot of people didn t come back and certainly slaves didn t, not that they all left even during emancipation and 63 but then cotton production and any other kind of economic thing in the south seems like it took 40 years to get started again. i m wondering about that. on that plantation during the civil war, anything, anything you could say about that. to questions there, the first one dealing with the slaves on the plantation. they didn t all leave at the beginning of the war because basically when slaves leave is the point when
actually to switch cotton production to food production. in fact what everybody realizes especially in the blockade in 1861 s were probably not going to get our cotton out of here anyway, we all know about jefferson davis king cotton diplomacy and withhold our cotton and force britain and france to come in on our side so they can get our cotton, of of course they start getting conned from india and brazil, and egypt and elsewhere. that s out of my realm, i don t know. but what will happen during the war itself is that the state government in order to feed the massive armies and the population, they will call on farmers to actually switch production from cotton to corn production and other foodstuffs as well. in fact i fact i saw a very interesting piece of letterhead, i was doing some research and a letter was written in february 19, 1862 and the letter had had cornstalks and it said cotton is no longer king, corn is king now. it was the effort of course to get people to swit
mississippi author, shelby foote. any understand offering this nation has to be based on an noning of the civil war. the civil war deoffendded us as what we are and it opened us to what we game, good and bad. it s necessary if you re going to understand the american character of the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the 19th 19th century. the crossroads of our being and a hell of a crossroads. i d like to crow introduce my kole legs. on the far right is timothy smith. mike mallard, justin solonick, and tom parson and i ll pitch it to tim. it s beautiful to be here with you today. i think what we ll do first is tell you a little bit about ourselves and introduce ourselves. my name is tim smith. i live in tennessee. i teach at the university of tennessee at martin. and mississippian at heart, though. a native mississippian, grew up in carrollton and went to ol mississippi misstate, got degrees from both somehow. egg bowl day i m a winner either way. my