Publisher's Synopsis
In 1836 eighteen year old Edmund Richardson left his family in North Carolina on a journey that would ultimately make him one of the wealthiest men in the South. At his death fifty years later in Jackson, Mississippi, he would control the sale and cultivation of more cotton than anyone else in the world. He would own close to forty plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, some with names that are well known today-Refuge, Deerfield, Glen Mary, and Carolina Plantations. He would head the largest cotton commission house in the United States and own one of the largest textile mills in the South. His net worth at the time of his death was estimated to be between $10,000,000 and $12,000,000.
His nickname, "Cotton King," was well deserved.
