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Colonel William Lindsey McDonald and his family are credited for "Cotton was King." With emphasis on Lauderdale County, Alabama, the book was especially enhanced by Mrs. Dot McDonald allowing me to use some of the stories that had been written by her late husband. Angela Broyles of Bluewater Publishing had developed an agreement for me to use some of Mr. McDonald's writings in completion of the book with the permission of his family. Without the cooperation of the William Lindsey McDonald family and Angela Broyles, the contents of this book would be greatly diminished. Since I was an admiring fan of Colonel William L. McDonald's writings, I was very much honored to co-author the book. I greatly appreciate the opportunity that I was given to write and co-author this book.Rickey Butch Walker has captured the enormous role cotton played in the history of this region. Walker describes the importance of cotton and slavery for the Native Americans who first explored and used this area, now known as Lauderdale County, even before white settlers arrived. The first section alone justifies the purchase of this book. Butch presents a wonderful account of the Indian claims to the land, together with stories of Doublehead and Chief George Colbert kin and the twisted dealing with the Government before the Indian Removal. The next section of the book describes the early white settlements that depended upon black slaves, and the final section details some of the Lauderdale County plantations, family relationships, and holdings, pre-Civil War. Walker had the benefit of an unpublished manuscript of William L. McDonald, the distinguished local historian who passed away in 2009. Many of McDonald's stories are nicely integrated throughout the text. This is a valuable read for anyone interested in local history.

In, "Cotton Was King Franklin-Colbert Counties" Rickey Butch Walker gives a wonderful account of Chickasaw Chief George Colbert as a cotton planter and the role of the Chickasaw Colbert's prior to the first white planters who moved with their slaves to claim the fertile lands of the Tennessee River Valley. After the Indian claims to the land were abolished by the 1816 treaty. The United States government transferred land titles to white settlers through federal land sales beginning in 1817. From the nutritionally deprived soil of cotton farms in the east, slave-owning planters poured into early Franklin County, Alabama, most of which is now present-day Colbert County. Rickey Butch Walker gives profiles of many of these wealthy plantation owners prior to the Civil War. This is the first detailed narrative of some of the white families of Franklin- Colbert County who helped develop the cotton industry of northwest Alabama. Some of the affluent planters, their plantations, land holding, property locations, and numbers of black slaves are discussed in detail. These early planters were dependent on black slave labor to become very wealthy and control vast tracts of land. This is a valuable read for anyone interested in the local history of cotton barons who came to North Alabama from North Carolina and Virginia.