Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book
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The Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book is a best-selling and pioneering guide to farm accounting in the antebellum cotton-producing regions of the United States. It was first published in 1847 or 1848 by Thomas Affleck (1812–1868), a Scottish immigrant and owner of the Glenblythe Plantation in Gay Hill, Washington County, Texas. The book contains a detailed system, including blank tables to be filled in, that allowed plantation owners to track the efficiency of their production. It also includes essays on various aspects of plantation management, such as the proper care and discipline of slaves.
Thomas Affleck published the first edition of the Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book in 1847[1] or 1848.[2] In 1842 he established a plant nursery and experimental cotton farm near Washington, Mississippi.[3] Later, discussing the origin of his Account Book, Affleck wrote:
During my first year's planting, I prepared two books with the pen, almost identical to that now published for the cotton plantation, and gave one to each of my next year's overseers, making it a part of my contract with them, that these books were to be correctly kept and returned to me at the end of the year. And, with a little assistance and encouragement, it was done. And what a satisfaction it was to me! Soon after that, at the suggestion of a New Orleans Publisher, I prepared him a transcript of the plan for publication.[3]
Affleck published new editions every year thereafter until the American Civil War of 1861–1865.[1] After the war, the name of the book was changed to The Farmers' Record and Account Book and the scope widened to include "any system of husbandry, ... the products of any climate, and ... farms of any extent."[2] Affleck's book was a consistent antebellum bestseller[1] in the cotton-producing states[4] of the lower Mississippi River Valley.[1]
Historian Mark M. Smith has noted that "it was precisely on plantations that masters employed the most rigorous, capitalist management techniques," which created a need for specialized ledgers and accounting techniques, Affleck's being "one of the most popular [of these] record book brands."[5] By the end of the 1850s, his Account Book had sold over three thousand copies, contributing to his powerful influence on the direction of the "plantation economy into scientific and systematic channels."[6]
According to historian Robert Williams, Affleck's manual included "a number of other forms which marked an improvement in the system of rural book-keeping. The record forms were essentially consistent with the intent and purpose of modern cost-accounting, and followed the best and most advanced principles of efficient administrative management."[7]
