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THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

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was the most effective tactic: “You force Slavery from its present loc<strong>at</strong>ion by appealing<br />

to the avaricious feelings <strong>of</strong> the slaveholder. We extermin<strong>at</strong>e it by appealing to his<br />

conscience and understanding.” If the British reformers were successful in supplying<br />

their country with free-labor cotton from India, Davis suggested th<strong>at</strong> would still not<br />

reform American slaveholders. “Would this prove to our planters th<strong>at</strong> slavery is sinful?”<br />

Davis asked. “No! only th<strong>at</strong> his business is unpr<strong>of</strong>itable. <strong>The</strong> result might & I doubt not<br />

would be, to do away with our slave holding Laws but not our slave holding spirit.” 117<br />

Despite these reserv<strong>at</strong>ions, British reformers and businessmen hoped to displace<br />

American slave-grown cotton from the European market. In an <strong>at</strong>tempt to replic<strong>at</strong>e<br />

American success in cultiv<strong>at</strong>ing cotton, the East India Company sent an allegedly covert<br />

oper<strong>at</strong>ive, Thomas Bayles, to the South to recruit planters willing to move to India and<br />

teach southern cotton growing practices. In 1839 and 1840, Bayles spent time in South<br />

Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana before departing for India in 1840 with ten recruits. 118<br />

In the spring <strong>of</strong> 1840 as British and American abolitionists prepared for the World<br />

Anti-Slavery Convention, free-produce supporters looked forward to an intern<strong>at</strong>ional<br />

movement against the products <strong>of</strong> slave-labor. British and American abstainers had<br />

seemingly developed an intern<strong>at</strong>ional community committed to displacing slave-labor<br />

products from the trans<strong>at</strong>lantic market. N<strong>at</strong>ional organiz<strong>at</strong>ions such as the American Free<br />

Produce Associ<strong>at</strong>ion and the British India Society, as well as regional groups such as the<br />

117 Edward M. Davis to Elizabeth Pease, March 30, 1840, MS.A.1.2.9.23, AS BPL.<br />

118 Southern Quarterly Review, April 1842, 459; Niles Register, March 27, 1841. See also Brian<br />

Schoen, <strong>The</strong> Fragile Fabric <strong>of</strong> the Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins <strong>of</strong> the Civil War<br />

(Baltimore: <strong>The</strong> Johns Hopkins <strong>University</strong> Press, 2009), 171; Frenise A. Logan, “A British East India<br />

Company Agent in the United St<strong>at</strong>es 1839-1840,” Agricultural History 48 (1974), 267-276.<br />

181

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