Short answers, pulled from the story.
Senator James Henry Hammond declared that cotton was king before the United States Senate in 1858. He argued that no power on earth could dare to make war against a nation controlling such a vital resource.
By 1860, Southern plantations supplied seventy-five percent of the world's cotton supply. European purchases soared from 720,000 bales in 1830 to nearly five million by 1860.
Southern cotton merchants refused to ship any cotton abroad hoping prices would soar and force foreign intervention. They assumed Europe would never allow the North to crush them while their textile mills starved.
Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell arrived in England in November 1861 to secure alliances. Their mission failed because there was no cotton to deliver due to the Union blockade.
Cotton production increased by seventy percent in British India between 1860 and 1870. Egypt also expanded output significantly to meet global demand during this period.