Outskirts Press, INC.

An action-packed romp through the U.S. Civil War.

King Cotton is a novel that spans the U.S. Civil War. The main character, Jack Bailey, exports cotton out of Charleston for his father’s business in Liverpool. During that period of history, cotton was the oil of the day, accounting for 60 percent of U.S. exports. With war looming, Bailey believes that Southern ports will be blockaded, which would put him out of business unless he can sell to the North. Doing so will require a cover that allows him to move across the lines, so he lands a job with famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. This brings him into contact with many of the famous people of the times, including Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Allan Pinkerton, Harriet Tubman, P.T. Barnum, John Wilkes Booth, and other Lincoln conspirators. He dates Anna Surratt, daughter of the first woman executed by the U.S. Government, Mary Surratt. Some of these associations suggest that Bailey participated in Lincoln’s assassination but, other than neglecting signs that were obvious in hindsight, he was not. He is, however, a cad through it all, indifferent to the reasons for the war or its outcome so long as he is profiting from it. Bailey’s job with Mathew Brady and his desperate efforts to sell cotton put him at some of the most momentous events of the war, including Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Gettysburg, Antietam, earlier attempts to kill Lincoln, and the burning of Columbia. While the book is historical fiction, most of the characters, events, and timelines are real.