Raw cotton dominated the role of the United States in world trade. In some years, it constituted 60% of the nation's total exports. Southern cotton supplied 7/8 of the world supply. Shrewdly, New York merchants became middlemen between planters in the American South and the cloth-making mills of Britain and France. (See Gallery 1.)

Although slavery in New York ended in 1827, the city profited from slave-grown cotton. Economic interest slanted New York politics and public opinion toward the South. White newspaper editors praised slavery as a benevolent system of labor and the only fit condition for people of African descent in America. Discrimination and ridicule greeted black New Yorkers every day. (See Gallery 2.)