B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter, Goodwin & Company, and Kinney Brothers.

American Brands acquired a variety of non-tobacco businesses during the 1970s and 1980s and sold its tobacco operations to Brown & Williamson in 1994.

[4] In 1882, two years after W. Duke, Sons & Company entered into the cigarette business, James Bonsack invented a cigarette-rolling machine.

Duke controlled the cigarette market, and his trust caught the attention of legislators in the United States, a country with historical aversion to monopolies.

[15] Vertical consolidation is the act of buying companies that perform services or produce goods on different parts of the supply chain.

The company also maintained an interest in producing other tobacco products in case trends within the cigarette market shifted.

“Plants had been assigned specific products without regard for previous ownership.”[19] Over the course of eight months, a plan for the dissolution, meant to assure competition among the new companies, was negotiated.

[21] The main result of the dissolution of American Tobacco Trust and the creation of these companies was an increase in advertising and promotion in the industry as a form of competition.

[24] Brown & Williamson took over the Reidsville, North Carolina operation in 1995 and closed it, costing 1000 people their jobs, but Commonwealth Brands took it over in a deal completed in October 1996, when the plant had 311 employees,[25] and kept 100 of them.

[28] In 2004, the previously abandoned American Tobacco Campus (ATC) in Durham was reopened as a complex of offices, shops, and restaurants.

Developed by Capitol Broadcasting and reopened as the American Tobacco Historic District, phase 1 consisted of the Fowler, Crowe, Strickland, Reed, and Washington Buildings, and included the construction of two new parking garages and a waterfall feature through the center of the campus designed by Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart of Atlanta, Georgia and constructed by W. P. Law, Inc. based in Lexington, South Carolina.

Phase 2, consisting of the remaining buildings and expansion of the water feature at the north end of the site, was under construction as of late 2006.

[29] The American Tobacco Trail, named for the company, is a multi-use rail-trail that begins just south of the Durham complex and runs 22 miles (35 km) towards Chatham and Wake Counties.

It follows the route of the railroad (Norfolk Southern Railway (former) Durham Branch) that once served the factories, but was later abandoned when these facilities were shut down.

[31] The success of the advertising campaign, which used movie actors and singers to promote the brand, can be attributed to Albert Lasker of the Lord & Thomas agency, and Edward Bernays, both of whom were hired by Hill.

The advertising budgets of important cigarette manufacturers such as the American Tobacco Company rapidly expanded until the 1930s when they began to be somewhat moderated by the government.