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The King Cotton Forever Changed The Southern Economy And Society

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The "King Cotton" forever changed the Southern Economy and Society with production change, the movement of slavery, and slavery itself. Eli Whitney invented the machine known as the Cotton Gin. The Cotton Gin uses a spiked cylinder to remove seeds from cotton fibers. Before this introduction, people used to remove seeds by hand, which was very time-consuming compared to the Cotton Gin. With the Cotton Gin, cotton was much more profitable. Therefore, to grow more cotton, there had to be more labor. So planters used slave labor to produce more cotton. As a result, cotton production grew along with the growth of slavery. Cotton then became the dominant source of wealth for the country. Cotton enriched southern farmers as well as Northern bankers,
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The southern colonies during this era developed a strong agriculture economy. The initial money making crops for the southern colonies were cotton, rice, sugar and tobacco. Cotton eventually became the big money making crop and major export to England, due to the ideal environmental conditions and large amount of land that was available after the Indians were relocated. Because of the large quantities of cotton that could be produced, the south had to expand its labor

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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.”

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How would you like to pick the seeds out of cotton by hand every day? Well, slaves did not like it very much, as you would not. Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, he brought the need for slaves higher, and contributed a tremendous part of the agricultural industrial revolution. The Cotton Gin is a machine that separates the cotton fibers and the cotton seeds.

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The Marvelous Eli Whitney Have you ever wondered what material was used to make the clothing you are wearing? Well, a lot of it is cotton. Cotton is a very profitable plant, but it is very hard to take the seeds out of the cotton fibers. So, here came a young man that had just graduated college and devised a machine to take the seeds out of the cotton fibers; the machine was called the “cotton gin.” His machine could help a farmer produce up to fifty pounds a day versus only one pound a day.

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Due to increased productivity, cotton became a cash crop in the South

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American Inventors: Eli Whitney Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the south. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost many profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention into securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed United States Army.

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The cotton allowed for plantation owners to grow lots of cotton, which meant more money. With the increase in production of cotton there was an increase in demand of slavery, making slavery very important. By 1860 cotton had become the cash crop, I believe they even had a saying “Cotton is King.” The change was cotton became the leading crop, and slaves became a high need.

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As more and more southerners became wealthier they bought more slaves to do the work. With more slaves, work was done faster (389). Lastly, the Spinning Mill was built and this helped the cotton industry because it spun raw cotton into thread (298). So weavers could use it to make

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Short-staple cotton is an extremely hardy crop so before the invention of the cotton gin, it was very difficult to make efficient money via its growth; but since fast money could be made, cotton gin usage and its economy grew rapidly. While the cotton gin could separate the fibers and the seeds, the cotton itself still had to be harvested and this led to a massive increase in slave labor and domestic slave trading between the North and the South. The slave population grew 4 times its previous size due to things like the cotton gin and the domestic slave trade; slaves were a part of Southern culture now. This plus the prior Negro Fort incident and how the government was willing to back slavery with militias, made it to where slavery was experiencing a massive boom with no regulation or end in sight. The invention of the cotton gin also increased westward expansion and industrialization in the north.

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Eli Whitney was an American inventor born in Massachusetts 1765. Once in the workshop, he notices that the cotton wasn't easy for picking the seed from the cotton balls. Then in his spare time, he put instrument together to make into a machine that can help the slaves or labor workers to clean the cotton in a shorter time. Thus, the Cotton gin was simply invented and used in cotton factories. This invention of cotton gin growth the cotton production and become the first large

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The cotton gin was an invention by Eli Whitney to help clear out seeds from cotton balls. Because of the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the most important cash crop in the South. Even though this helped the South’s economy, the cotton gin did not help the slaves in the South at all. To clarify, the demand for slaves only grew larger. Because the South decided to focus on agriculture instead of factories, the region got most of its consumer goods from the North.

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His inspiration for building this was for creating it easier for the slaves when he visited a plantation in Georgia. It worked like a strainer or a sieve so the seeds could fall through the metal mesh in the bottom of it. Smaller gins could hand cranked and larger ones would be powered by horses or eventually a steam engine. Only one of the machines could remove about 50 pounds of cotton seeds a day. After he got his patent, him and Miller later started a company manufacturing the cotton gin.

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Eli Whitney was responsible for these, for example, the cotton gin. Whitney invented the cotton gin to make removing the seeds from cotton bolls faster. The main reason Whitney looked into his invention was because demand for cotton was growing so he wanted to find away to quicken work for the slaves in the South. The cotton gin led to big changes, England and North America demanded more cotton quicker to help expand their textile mills. Making production of cotton easier, the cotton gin turned cotton into a cash crop, making it more valuable in trade.

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A number of technological and economic innovations were created during the antebellum era which was around the 1700s. During this era many innovations were created to build up the economic faster and more efficient. The first major innovation develop was the cotton gin. The cotton gin, is a machine that was designed to separate the cotton from the seeds, it made harvesting much easier for the slaves to produce a larger quantity of cotton. Once the cotton gin hit the market industry it expanded throughout the south, making labor not as difficult as it was before Eli Whitney, the inventor, created the cotton gin.

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However, since the cotton gin worked so fast the people in the fields were getting behind on their work so they farmers needed to hire slaves to pick the cotton. Factories in the Nouth grew from this and started to gain lots of money. Because of all the big shipments going through they created railroads so they would be sent faster. However, after a while people stopped buying cotton so the prices went down and people were no longer making as much money. P6

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