Cotton early attracted the attention of the French colonists in Louisiana. In the year 1752, Michel, in a report to the French minister on the condition of the country, gave interesting details of the cultivation of cotton and the difficulty found in separating the wool from the seed.
In 1758 white Siam seed was introduced into Louisiana. Du Prate says, "This East India annual plant has been found to be much better and whiter than what is cultivated in our colonies, which is of the Turkey kind."
Letters from Paris to Governor Roman state that there is among the French archives at Paris, Department of Marine and Colonies, a most curious and instructive report on cotton in 1760. It was found to be a very profitable crop in Louisiana, for in the year 1768 the French planters, in a memoir to their Government, complained that the parent Government had turned them over to the Spaniards just "at the time when a new mine had been discovered; when the culture of cotton, improved by experience, promises the planter a recompense of his toils, and furnishes persons engaged in fitting out vessels with the cargoes to load them."
In 1762 Captain Bossu, of the French marines, said: "Cotton of this country (Louisiana) is of the species called the 'white cotton of Siam.' It is neither so fine nor so long as the silk cotton, but it is, however, very white and very fine."
In 1775 the Provincial Congress of South Carolina recommended the cultivation of cotton, and in the same year a similar enactment was passed by the Virginia Assembly, which declared that "all persons having proper land ought to cultivate and raise a quantity of hemp, flax, and cotton, not only for the use of their own families, but to spare to others on moderate terms." This legislation no doubt was suggested on account of the changed relations of the colonies with Great Britain.
In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, in a letter, says: "The four southernmost States make a great deal of cotton. Their poor are almost entirely clothed with it in winter and summer. In winter they wear shirts of it and outer clothing of cotton and wool mixed. In summer their shirts are linen, but the outer clothing cotton. The dress of the women is almost entirely of cotton, manufactured by themselves, except the richer class, and even many of these wear a great deal of homespun cotton. It is as well manufactured as the calicoes of Europe."
At the convention at Annapolis in 1786 James Madison expressed the conviction that from the experience already had "from the garden practice in Talbot County, Maryland, and the circumstances of the same kind abounding in Virginia, there was no reason to doubt that the United States would one day become a great cotton-producing country." This year Sea Island cotton-seed was introduced into Georgia, the seed being sent from the Bahama Islands to Governor Tatnall, William Spaulding, Richard Leake, and Alexander Pisset, of that State. The cotton adapted itself to the climate, and every successive year from 1787 saw long-staple cotton extending itself along the shores of South Carolina and Georgia.
According to Thomas Spaulding, the first planter who attempted cotton culture on a large scale was Richard Leake, of Savannah, but the editor of Niles Register (1824) says that Nichol Turnbull, a native of Smyrna, was the first planter who cultivated cotton upon a scale for exportation. His residence was at Deptford Hall, three miles from Savannah, where he died in 1824.
In a letter dated Savannah, December 11, 1788, to Colonel Thomas Proctor, of Philadelphia, Leake says: "I have been this year an adventurer—and the first that has attempted it on a large scale—in introducing a new staple for the planting interests—the article of cotton—samples of which I beg leave now to send you and request you will lay them before the Philadelphia Society for Encouraging Manufactures, that the quality may be inspected. Several here, as well as in North Carolina, have followed me and tried the experiment, and it is likely to answer our most sanguine expectations. I shall raise about five thousand pounds in the seed from eight acres of land, and next year I intend to plant about fifty to one hundred acres if suitable encouragement is given. The principal difficulty that arises to us is the cleansing it from the seed, which I am told they do with great dexterity and ease in Philadelphia with gins or machines made for the purpose. I am told they make those that will clean thirty to forty pounds clean cotton in a day and upon very simple construction."
The first attempt in South Carolina to produce Sea Island cotton was made in 1788 by Mrs. Kinsey Burden at Burden's Island. As early as 1779 the short staple was produced by her husband, whose negroes were clothed in homespun cotton cloth. Mrs. Burden's efforts failed. The plants did not mature, and this was attributed to the seed, which was of the Bourbon variety. The first successful variety appears to have been grown by William Elliot on Hilton Head, near Beaufort, in 1790, with five and one-half bushels of seed, which he bought in Charleston and for which he paid fourteen shillings a bushel. He sold his crop for ten and one-half pence a pound.