"COTTON IS KING" has been received, generally, with much favor by the public. The author's name having been withheld, the book was left to stand or fall upon its own merits. The first edition has been sold without any special effort on the part of the publishers. As they did not risk the cost of stereotyping, the work has been left open for revision and enlargement. No change in the matter of the first edition has been made, except a few verbal alterations and the addition of some qualifying phrases. Two short paragraphs only have been omitted, so as to leave the public documents and abolitionists, only, to testify as to the moral condition of the free colored people. The matter added to the present volume equals nearly one-fourth of the work. It relates mainly to two points: _First_, The condition of the free colored people; _Second_, The economical and political relations of slavery. The facts given, it is believed, will completely fortify all the positions of the author, on these questions, so far as his views have been assailed. The field of investigation embraced in the book is a broad one, and the sources of information from which its facts are derived are accessible to but few. It is not surprising, then, that strangers to these facts, on first seeing them arranged in their philosophical relations and logical connection, should be startled at their import, and misconceive the object and motives of the author. For example: One reviewer, in noticing the first edition, asserts that the writer "endeavors to prove that slavery is a great blessing in its relations to agriculture, manufactures, and commerce." The candid reader will be unable to find any thing, in the pages of the work, to justify such an assertion. The author has proved that the products of slave labor are in such universal demand, through the channels named by the reviewer, that it is impracticable, in the existing condition of the world, to overthrow the system; and that as the free negro has demonstrated his inability to engage successfully in cotton culture, therefore American slavery remains immovable, and presents a standing monument of the folly of those who imagined they could effect its overthrow by the measures they pursued. This was the author's aim.