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Cotton gin social impact
Slavery and the cotton kingdom cflinnbenton
Essays about slavery and cotton in the south
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The use of the cotton gin had a major impact on slavery by expanding the use and population of slaves. “This machine revolutionized the process of separating cotton from its seed, making it dramatically faster and less expensive to turn picked cotton into usable cotton for textiles” the author said. Harvesting the cotton fields was intense work and the more cotton that was being produced lead to more fields causing more slaves to be needed to work those fields. All the large cotton plantations that the south maintained, by 1850 the slave population increased tremendously. “Southern wealth had become reliant on this one crop and thus was completely dependent on slave-labor.”
The Invention of the cotton gin greatly affected the growth of the south in the 1800s. It did so in many ways including effecting the souths economy, and causing the south to have a much higher demand for slaves. Eli Whitney’s invention revolutionized the cotton industry and caused it to grow and prosper. Because of this the south became a huge producer in the cotton industry causing the economy to skyrocket. One reason why Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin boosted the souths economy was the fact that it made cotton production much faster.
In 1793 man named Eli Whitney's created an invention this machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton this creation was called the cotton gin. The invention help cotton become very profitable. It was a major economic difference between the north and south region. Down in the south the economy started only worrying about the cotton which means they depended on slavery but up North they worried more on their industries to help more with their work. Up north their industries were buying raw cotton and putting it into finished goods.
The invention of the cotton gin created a market for cotton that the planters could hardly supply without cheap labor. Almost every available acre was brought under cotton culture as the small farmers were driven into the West. The demand for slaves to work the fields was enormous. This led to the development of the plantation system of the Far South and Southwest, where masters were near constantly extending their holdings of lands and slaves. Efforts to form new slave states were common, most prominent of these efforts was that to annex Texas.
Eli Whitney was famous for making the cotton gin, which tacks seeds out of picked cotton. He also made muskets for the U.S. government.(Cefry pg 10 ,18 ). Most plantations could only grow a type of cotton that was difficult and expensive to clean. The seeds had to be removed by hand for that reason. Many plantation owners in the south had to stop growing cotton.
It revolutionized the cotton industry by making it more profitable. A machine was now used to remove seeds from cotton rather than having to remove them by hand. This allowed more cotton to be processed quicker which made production of cotton more efficient for farmers. Prior to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was actually dying out in the southern United States due to how labor intensive the removal of seeds from cotton had become.
As cotton farms grew, slavery also increased. Although machines helped speeding up the process of developing thread, cotton still needed to get picked up by hands. Slaves worked on the farms and picked up cotton, which only benefited planters (History Learning Site). Human resources affected the growth of cotton by allowing planters to make more money, and produce more cotton. The third resources is capital.
When the Cotton Gin was invented, the South was the main area that benefited from it. The Cotton Gin increased the production of cotton which in turn meant that the South needed more slaves to manage and work the cotton production. The invention of the Cotton Gin led to a boom in the Southern economy and created a one-crop economy for the South. After the Cotton Gin, the South provided about two-thirds of the world's cotton supply. With the increasing slavery, there was a stress put on the relationship of the North and the South and their opposing views of slavery.
Sectionalism Before the 19th century, Americans stuck to their traditional roots and felt no need to try new things or implement new technologies, but that soon changed. In the South, the demand for cotton was at an all time high, but it was a long and difficult process as slaves had to separate the seed and cotton by hand. A man named Eli Whitney saw an opportunity to fix this issue and created the infamous Cotton Gin. The machine worked by inputting the cotton on one side and cranking it as it separates the seeds and cotton with the hassle as the output results in cotton.
Inventions like Eli Whitneys' Cotton Gin also greatly contributed to cotton's success in the South, along with their accesibility to cheap labor through the
One technological development that influenced this growth was the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. “By midcentury America was growing three-quarters of the world’s supply of cotton.” (Doc 2). Most American cotton shipped to England or New England where it was manufactured into cloth and by the mid-1800s, the south provided three-fifths of America’s exports, most of it in cotton.
Disposing of slaves as commodities most of the population in the south gave their slaves the worst treatment possible. Forcing them into picking and planting crops, the most arduous jobs that no white will ever take part off. Conversely, the creation of the cotton gin exponentially increased demands for slaves in the cotton states compared border states. The south was the main producer of cotton for the whole country, furthermore, it not all sold to most of the states in the union but also produced cotton for countries like Britain. In order for the south to balance them with the demands of the union and outside countries, they forced more slaves into the south.
The smaller cotton gins could be operated by hand, while the bigger ones could be powered by a horse and later by a steam engine. The Cotton Gin impacted the lives of the working class by increasing the demand for labor and land, reducing
In Georgia cotton and tobacco were the main crops that came after the American Revolution, cotton later becoming dominant. In 1860, with cotton becoming so dominant, an invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney helped produced more than 700,000 bales of cotton with around 68,000 farmers. Few farmers, around 3,500 farmers, had 500 acres or more, and others had around less than 100.Cotton became an overwhelming product of the south, in 1870 Georgia was suppressing 725,000 bales. However, the negative effect of cotton was that is tarnished the soil that it was being produced on. In result of the negative effects Georgia began to place more focus on livestock, poultry, orchards, vineyards, vegetables, forage, and forestry.
The invention of the cotton gin led to cotton plantations spreading into the South Carolina upcountry [335]. The American Industrial Revolution was centered on Northern factories producing cotton textiles, which generated a tremendous demand for cotton [335]. In order to provide workforce to grow this new crop, African slave trade opened between 1803 and 1808. Historians estimate that around 1 million slaves were shifted from the older slave states to the Deep South between 1800 and 1860, mainly to be sold at auction for work in the cotton fields
