Whilst Soul by Soul examined the life within New Orleans slave pens, Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams focuses on the global reach and expansion of the Cotton Kingdom in the Mississippi Valley. Despite several issues with the book, Johnson’s focus on slavery, capitalism and imperialism, coupled with his thought-provoking arguments, makes this book entertaining, ambitious and brilliant. Whilst broader in scope is somewhat seems too digressionary at times and Johnson did not take the argument far in enough in the latter part of the book. Despite leaving out important factors such as religion, River of Dark Dreams provides an eye-opening look at slavery and the Mississippi Valley. Johnson dismisses the well-trod path of the ‘story of the coming of the civil war’ of Kansas and the Compromise of 1850, to focus on volatility of the Cotton Kingdom, heightened by slaveholder’s acting like there is no tomorrow and thus depleting the slave market and the capacity of the soil to produce. As a solution to these problems, slaveholders thus looked towards expansion and attempts to re-open to Atlantic slave trade. Johnson’s aim is to persuade readers to stop viewing this period as through a nationalistic eye, with North versus South, and instead see the South as ‘an expanding empire desiring a more prominent role it the international commercial world.’
Johnson’s main argument is that slavery, capitalism and imperialism were interconnected in the Mississippi Valley. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase giving life to an exhausting Cotton institution in the Upper South, Johnson shows how everyone, from riverboat captains to merchants in New Orleans profited greatly from the cotton trade. But Johnson argues that this institution was extremely volatile. Concentration on primarily cotton made Southern economy both dependent and vulnerable. Focused on a bid to increase their cotton yield, more and more slaves were purchased to tend the cotton, depleting the soil, created dangerous situations which resulted in events such as the Panic of 1837. Buying more slaves than they could manage led to slaveholder’s having a hard time supporting and controlling their slaves, leading to malnutrition and poorly-clothed slaves as well as widespread fears of slaves escaping and revolting. Johnson argues that these desperate and unsustainable actions of slaveholders was because since the cotton industry was ‘extraordinary capital intensive and most of the planters money was tied up in lands and slave,’ for liquidity, slaveholders had to rely on credit, for which to attain, buying slaves and planting cotton was essential. The solution of transferring ‘their investment from one form of capital to another, cutting their losses and challenging their money into the Next Big Thing’ was impossible for ‘their capital could not simply rust or lie fallow.’ The Cotton Kingdom had to ‘either die or conquer a nation- it could not hesitate or pause’ for ‘the preservation of slavery was fundamental to the economic future of the South.’ This is one of Johnson’s strong points: his ability in unravelling on ‘what might have been’, a world that the most aggressive white expansionists wanted to create, determined to drive the South out of its dependent status. As a solution to these problems, expansion into Cuba and Central America and the re-opening of the Atlantic slave trade seemed like reasonable and urgent solutions which needed to be done. The ‘reopeners’ strongly felt whilst immigration aided in building up the North’s labor force, the South should be able to do the same.’
Johnson falls short in the latter part of the book on imperialism. Whilst the early chapters are interesting and presents readers with a vivid sense of the past, this sort of detail is missing elsewhere. There are three problems in particular that make this section less convincing. Firstly, although Johnson’s greatest strength in this book and important contribution to the historiography of this period, is his presentation of the Antebellum South in a different manner as opposed to the traditional narrative of sectional conflicts, this section lacks credible evidence, making his arguments seem at time exaggerated and packed with generalisations. Johnson argues that the traditional narrative is ‘resolutely nationalist in its spatial framing,’ and ‘teleological narratives.’ This argument is made very convincing by Johnson assertion that for the slaveholders in the Mississippi Valley and President of US in 1852, who addressed this matter in his State of the Union address, ‘the most important issue in the early 1850s was Cuba,’ not what was happening in Congress. However, Johnson’s generic use of the terms ‘Southern slaveholders’ or ‘pro-slavery Southerners’, ‘supporters of the trade’ and ‘the reopeners’ leads us to questions exactly who these representatives were. This stems from Johnson’s failure in assessing the credibility and reception of the writings of pro-slavery spokesmen, in the Mississippi Valley. Moreover Johnson creates this picture in which such views were widespread and popular amongst all in the Mississippi Valley. If the reopening of the Atlantic slave trade was so popular, why was this matter dismissed following secession without so much as a whimper? Better constructed arguments and more detailed inclusion of the views of slaves and non-slaveholding white men on these matters, would have added more weight to his argument.
The second problematic area in this book, is in Johnson’s claim that ‘bales per hand per acre’ was the South’s ‘ruling trinomial.’ As Gavin Wright asserts, ‘the trinomial makes no mathematical or economic sense.’ Also Wright notes that Johnson has provided no evidence that cotton planters used the ratios. This explains Johnson’s inconsistency with his citation of this trinomial as ‘bales per hand per acre’ (p. 153, 177, 197) and as ‘Bales per acre per hand’ (pp. 217, 246-47, 254), as if ‘the ratios are interchangeable.’ The planters did, however, write of bales per hand, bales per acre and acres per hand. Thirdly, the absence of religion and paternalism cannot be ignored. The importance of religion and its contribution in shaping Southern politics and society cannot be stressed enough. Moreover, as evident in Jonson’s previous books on the importance of paternalism as a justification for the actions of slaveholders, was paternalism used by slaveholders to support their imperialistic ambitions?
Johnson use of a wide range of primary and secondary sources is remarkable, however he does not look to uncover new sources but rather layer new interpretations onto old evidence. What is different and new in this book, is that through the use of pamphlets and published journals of Southern imperialists, Johnson is able to explain ‘why those same southerners, in 1860, believed they could go it alone in a breath-taking bid for nationhood.’ Other effective use of secondary sources include his use of David Harvey’s concept of the ‘spatial fix’ to argue that Imperial expansion was seen as a solution to the problems caused by ‘environmental unsustainability and the weakening of white solidarity.’ But Johnson has received criticism for his ‘reading of the catalyst for this crisis, the economic crisis in the 1830s’.’ This is because of his inability to fully outline the ‘motivations and consequences of Andrew Jackson’s tinkering with the financial system through the Specie Act,’ and for overlooking the ‘impact of foreign investors’ wasteful investment in infrastructure and the poor harvest in Britain, which precipitated a fall in demand for American cotton, and thus instigated the crisis.’ A better read on the causes of the economic crisis in 1837 would be Alasdair Robert’s ‘America’s First Great Depression’.
Overall, River of Dark Dreams is a must-read and highly recommended for an understanding of the uncertainty and fear that accompanied the lives of slaveholders. Although this book provides little new information for specialists in this field, it is a must-read for gaining an understanding of the volatility of the Cotton Kingdom, its global reach and the imperialistic ambitions of the South. Johnson’s different approach to the usual story of the coming of the civil war by dismissing the usual narratives including Kansas and the Compromise of 1850, presents this period in a new light, one scholars will not be able to ignore.