Two themes, one explicit, one implicit, compete in this exploration of the link between the development of American capitalism and the devastation of the African-American community. The price of cotton as the determinant of America’s destiny, influencing and even overcoming individual will and ethical behavior’ is the fully explicit one . . . The secondary and competing theme is Northern complicity in the slave trade, the cotton economy, segregation, racism and the development of the ‘black underclass in the North and South, with its destructive behavioral characteristics.