From WikiAnswers.com:
“It goes back to the days of ‘stoop labor’ in the cotton fields, where workers would work bent at the waist from dawn to dusk, “choppin’ cotton.” About the best they could expect out of their day was to be choppin’ high cotton, so that they didn’t have to stoop over as much.”

So my phrase would be “High praise for high cotton”.

I pray the Lord blesses this man with “high cotton” blessings for cutting his hands while he picked. Cotton bolls and their leaves are VERY sharp and will shred your hands as you reach in to pull out the fluff from the center.

Allison in Atlanta

I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin’ in the coal mine.

I like the Johnny Cash version especially.

From the life story of Orin and Ann Cannon Woodbury’s daughter Eleanor Woodbury Jarvis:

In the summer she helped plant cotton, and when it was ripe she helped pick it. Then it had to be ginned [seeds removed], spun, wove, and then they had to sew their clothes….But more than anything else, the family would gather round the fireplace, at night and do their work by the firelights, – spinning, knitting, sewing or reading…

Here’s a picture of Eleanor’s mother-in-law, Ann Prior Jarvis, in clothing of St. George manufacture.

Cynthia, my ancestor’s name was Woodbury. I’ll have to look up where in Dixie they settled. I think it was in St George.