The Obsession

Obsession is probably not the primary take-away the author of Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1862-1877, intended. But I read a statistic in Jere Nash’s book that shocked me, and pointed toward the price of obsession.

The Slide from Slavery Wealth

In 1860, Mississippi was per capita the wealthiest state in America. The economy was 7th overall in hard numbers, producing the largest 1.2 million bales of cotton in the country. Cotton, in the mind of these planters, meant enslaved labor, and one third of the state’s revenue came from a tax on enslaved people. By 1870, the state’s wealth ranking had dropped to 26th. Ten years AFTER the war, we were in 26th place. Not 50th. Only 26th.

So, why did we drop to, and stay at, 50th place?

Answer: Because even as the price of cotton fell and buyers turned away from Southern cotton in favor of new producers who had entered the market during the war, Mississippi planters rode that cotton horse until it dropped. For decades and decades and decades, they made this disastrous choice despite everyone and their brother urging them to diversify their crop. A damning decision for the state’s economy and for the people it harmed, for everyone.

Obsession Overrules Logic

Why did they follow this path to the bottom?

Reconstruction in Mississippi rolls through the reasons historians cite. “Financial and legal constraints, cycles of poverty and dependency, accumulation of debt, dearth of capital to invest in new equipment….” But, in the end, the historians can only shrug, ”It’s a mystery.”

Ask me (which no one does), historians are blinded by believing men rational. In truth, the planters’ mangled egos—loss of the war, of wealth, of the right to enslavement that defined their economic and personal worth as white people—prevented their brains from functioning properly. Logic and intelligence went out the window, overwhelmed by the desire to GO BACK. To make money the way we once had. To recapture the cotton dream, or at least regain our right to strive for it. Wipe out even the memory of the disasters and return to being the wealthiest state in America.

Those making economic and political decisions refused to believe we were wrong about the war, wrong about slavery, wrong about cotton, and wrong about our racism. They could handle the state sliding into an economic pit more than they could take giving up those beliefs.

The Obsession Gets Worse

Reading all these histories about Reconstruction and slavery, I can’t shake one thought. Nash quotes Ross Moore on white Mississippians in Reconstruction fighting interference with their “handling” of their laborers. Freedman Bureau officials reported the same, using more graphic language. Of course, violence maintained slavery. After emancipation, white violence against Black folks engorged. When I read this, it puts me in mind of violence spiking when an abused partner leaves the abuser. It’s the most dangerous time for the brave one fleeing, the time most likely to end in their death.

An insistence on the right to beat your laborers. Rage at being denied it. The “shameful humiliation” of Blacks gaining freedom. The resulting epidemic of violence that an observer described as, “outrages committed which History must hand down as only equaled by the most uncivilized of the Human Race.” The continuing historically-documented obsession of white Mississippians with Black Mississippians. This is not just functional violence. It’s violence as psychopathic illness. The Southern “plantation”— which we historically portray as “genteel”—was a breeding ground for mental illness that has dominated us for generations.

What If?

The question rumbling in my brain is, what if? What if the powers-that-be in Mississippi had listened and chosen a path other than cotton? If we had abandoned our obsession, the social control of lynching violence wouldn’t have been necessary. Jim Crow, redundant. Under a different economy, we could have been free to heal from our “Southern way of life,” a phrase that if I never hear again, it will be too soon. That which is so beautiful in the state and its people could have dominated our communal lives. We can still do it, if we give up defending, and repeating, our past obsessions.