What key details support or elaborate on the realationship between cotton and slavery presented in "when cotton was king"?

The southern states were highly dependant on the agricultural industry during the second half of the 18th century. Under this scenario, the slave trade was a common practice among landowners at the time.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 gave a slaveholder the right to maintain the ownership of a scaped slave. This gave birth to the "slave catcher" profession. The novel mentions details about how people were trained in order to execute the tasks of capturing the slaves and the internal conflicts some of them go through while performing their tasks.

c) troops march forward in close formation against newer, more accurate weapons