preview

Cotton Revolution Dbq

Decent Essays

The Cotton Revolution was a changing time for America. However, it brought far more than cotton. It brought western expansion, industrialization, a transformation of economy, and the rise of the abolitionist movement. It also brought a change in the family dynamic, the removal of Indians from their native lands, and a rise in slavery like never before. The cotton revolution brought class conflict, child labor, accelerated immigration. (American Yawp) It’s impossible to discuss the Cotton Revolution without shedding light on the accompanying Transportation Revolution. Following the War of 1812, Americans rushed to build new national infrastructure including roads canals and railroads. By 1850, Americans laid more than 30,000 miles of railroads. …show more content…

The rise of cotton benefited from a change in transportation technology that aided and guided the growth of southern cotton into one of the world’s leading commodities (American Yawp). The eventual commercialization of the West became the catalyst for Eastern manufacturing, increasing demand as a result of being able to ship goods in territories they were unable to previously (Migrating North Powerpoint). Further, the planting of cotton in the south also began to grow weary on the soil. This called for the need for new land which led to Western expansion. However, the idea of expanding West came at a cost to the Indians, fueling the Indian Removal Act. This removal laid in the belief that Americans could best use new lands and …show more content…

While the participation in the global slave trade was ruled unconstitutional, over 1,000,000 slaves from the tobacco-producing Upper South to cotton fields in Lower South between 1790 and 1860, (American Yawp). This came from the shift in Southerners point of view from “Slavery is a necessary evil,” to “Slavery is a positive good.” The rise of Cotton wed the South to slavery, without it there could be no cotton kingdom. Although northerners were involved first handedly with slavery, their factories fueled the demand for slave-grown southern cotton and their banks provided the financing, (Cotton Revolution, American Yawp). Despite the ban on slave trade, the number of slaves in the South increased by 750,000 in 20 years (Old South Powerpoint). Many replaced the famous “Cotton Belt” to “Black belt” not to describe the rice color of the land but the people that worked on that

Get Access