How Did Slavery Influence The Growth Of Slavery

The industrial revolution during the 19th Century led to the rapid expanse of cotton production in America. Several new inventions began to be used which could more efficiently use cotton and other similar materials to aid in the production of textiles. During that time, the textile industry was big and the demand for cotton continued to grow however the price of cotton never increased to match the demand. Slaves were taken advantage of and because their labor was so cheap it was beneficial to slave owners to collect cotton using slave labor and trade the cotton for a profit. Great Britain was the worlds most powerful country and a large part of that countries industrial life was cotton textiles. America became Britain’s biggest trade partner for cotton and the increase in trade allowed America to build on its own and gain a bigger variety of goods through trade. The cotton industry was one of the biggest influences of America’s growth in the 19th Century and slave labor was used to ensure its expansion could continue throughout the years.

The author also explores the profitability of slavery as an institution, as while the tendency of slave owners to keep their capital invested in slaves rather than industry resulted in a lack of economic diversification in the South, it also resulted in great profits during times of high demand for agricultural products. Phillips states that more research is required in this area.

The South, on the other hand, was highly dependent upon the institution of slavery. It was still primarily an agricultural society that needed as many laborers as possible in order for the plantation owners to make ends meet. According to historian Douglas Harper, “In 1793 came the cotton gin, which brought a 50-fold increase in the average daily output of short-staple cotton, promoted the rapid expansion of a ‘cotton kingdom’ across the Deep South, and made large-scale slavery profitable.” Because of this, the slave became an essential tool to the farmers of the south; more money became invested in slavery rather than in industrial improvements. Based upon the 1860 U.S. Census, there were almost a whopping total of four million slaves in the South alone. In fact, the more slaves an owner had, the more prestige. “Most slave owners owned fewer than five slaves, and only 12 percent of Southerners had twenty or more slaves. Many whites who had no slaves looked with envy upon the wealthy, and to a degree admired them.” This hierarchy had a clearly defined social structure which created distinctions between rich and poor whites as well as racial segregation. This agricultural society and its strict hierarchy only increased the social and racial disparities found in the southern region of the United States.

In 1794, U.S. inventor Eli Whitney patented a machine that transformed the production of cotton by significantly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber called the cotton gin. By the middle of the 19th century cotton had become America’s leading export. This gave Sothern’s the rationalization to maintain and expand slavery despite large number of abolitionists in America. While the cotton gin made cotton processing easier, it facilitated planters in earning greater profits, resulting in larger cotton crops. This in turn increased slavery because it was the cheapest form of labor. As for the North, particularly New England, the cotton gin and cotton’s increase meant a steady supply of raw materials for its textile mills.

Southern economy was the center of plantation that cultivated cotton. Many the rich started to carve the plantation to earn money by exporting cotton. They needed a lot of labor and slavery was proper to use. The majority of white southerners did not own slaves because planters monopolized the best land. They could not help taking possession of the land that was not proper to cultivate cotton. Most of them earned a living by self-sufficiency even though the slave population was growing: from 697,624 in 1790 to 3,953,760 in 1860.

The crops grown on plantations and the slavery system changed significantly between 1800-1860. In the early 1800s, plantation owners grew a variety of crops – cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, and wheat. Cotton had the potential to be profitable, but there was wasn’t much area where cotton could be grown. However, the invention of the cotton gin changed this - the cotton gin was a machine that made it much easier to separate the seeds from cotton. Plantation owners could now grow lots of cotton; this would make them a lot of money. As a result, slavery became more important because the demand for cotton was high worldwide. By 1860, cotton was the main export of the south. The invention of the cotton gin and high demand for cotton changed

With its warm climate and fertile soil, the South became an agrarian society, where tobacco, rice, sugar, cotton, wheat, and hemp defined the economy (“Colonial Economy”). Because of a labor shortage, landowners bought African slaves to work their massive plantations. Even small-scale farmers often used slave labor as a means to help increase their production rate ("John C. Calhoun's Defense of Slavery"). After the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, cotton could finally be mass produced (“Slavery”). However, in order to pick all the cotton, slave labor would be needed, thus the reason for hundreds of thousands of imported slaves during the 1700s. In the United States, a stronger case can be made that slavery played a critical role in economic development. Cotton, grown primarily with slave labor, provided over half of all US export earnings. By 1840, the South grew sixty percent of the world's cotton and provided about seventy percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. (“Colonial Economy”). In addition, due to the South specializing in cotton production, the North developed a variety of businesses that provided services for the slave South, including textile factories, a meat processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers (“Colonial Economy”). By the time the Civil War erupted, 4.9

The antebellum era (also referred to as the plantation era) between 1800’s to 1860 was a period of slave driven farming, marking the economic growth of the south. During this period in 1815, cotton was the most valuable traded produce in the United States and by 1840, it was more valuable compared to all other imported and exported goods combined. In 1860, one year before the Civil War, the South was predominantly reliant on the sale of agricultural products, such as tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton estimated at 5,344,000 bales, to a worldwide market. while the southern states generated two-thirds of the world's cotton supply, the South had little industrial capability (manufactured good estimated to the value of$156,000,000), consisting of an estimated 29 percent of the railroad tracks or 14484.1km, and only 13 percent of the nation's banks. The South attempted slave labour in manufacturing, but were mainly content with their agricultural economy. Their delay in industrial expansion was not the result of any integral economic disadvantages, there was a vast amount of wealth in the South, but it was mainly bound to slave labour. In 1860, the financial value of slaves in the United States surpassed the participated value of all of the land's railroads, factories, and banks combined. the day before the Civil War, the value of cotton was at its peak, the Confederate aristocrats were confident that the significance of cotton on the world market, especially in England and France,

The growth of the cotton industry impacted America economically and socially. “The domestic slave trade exploded, providing economic opportunities for whites involved in many aspects of the trade and increasing the possibility of

Due to this, the economy of America at this period of time was centred around cotton and as Clement Eaton stated, 'After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the tempo of life in the South quickened.' The industry was able to achieve large profits through the use of slaves-the cheapest labour of all-and eventually 'Three-fourths of the world's supply of cotton came from the southern states.'

Slaves suffered within a system characterized by undernourishment, overwork, harsh punishment, ill health, and despair. The purpose of this paper is to address the significant problems slavery caused the world in which talk of rights and liberties were increasingly popularized. Slavery divested lives of many African Americans who were sold into enslavement for many years.

Slaves performed many different services, they worked in homes, factories and helped even as skilled laborers but their most common work was in the fields, “Slaves grew a variety of crops including rice, sugar, and tobacco, but the “white gold,” cotton was central to the southern and national economies” (Foner 598-600). Cotton slowly grew into a major US export, with its exportation swelling from only a few thousand bales in the late 1700s to five million bales before the start of the Civil War (Foner 587). With the cotton crop at the time rising to unprecedented levels, not only nationally but also globally, this put extra emphasis and value on the slaves shouldering the vast workload of this economy. “By 1860 the economic value of property in slaves amounted to more than the sum of all the money invested in railroads, banks, and factories in the United States” ( Foner 595). There was so much money and business invested, tied into and benefitting from the exploitation of the free labor of these slaves. Southern Planters had major political pull and a significant portion of this country’s wealth, “Planters dominated the antebellum southern society and politics and exerted enormous influence in National affairs as well. The wealthiest Americans before the Civil War were planters in the South Carolina low country (where rice was the principal crop) and the Mississippi Valley cotton region around Natchez” (Foner 621). I believe that with all the money, power and land that was reliant on the work of the slaves there was no way these southerners were just going to give that up without a

The stability that slavery created in the American South between 1820 and 1860 was phenomenal. Economic stability was like no other country had ever seen, this economic stability created a global marketing network throughout many different nations, trade routes that still exist within modern America today. Slavery became the bedrock of American South livelihood; it became so valuable that it was almost seen as unimaginable to live without slavery. “It was inconceivable that European colonists could have settled and developed America without slave labour taking place,” this was according to……. The reason the south prospered and grew like it did was due to slavery. The value that slaves had to their slave owners was unquestionable. Slave owners were able to receive loans, whilst using their slaves as guarantors; these loans would then have been used in the purchasing of further land, more livestock and more slaves. It was also said that slave owners used their slaves to pay of any outstanding debt they may have had. It is clear to see the economic value that slaves possessed; they were included in the valuation of estates, for example; (Example), and this in turn became a source of tax revenue for the National as well as the local Governments, it was also

New markets brought forth new opportunities for expansion. America was infantile to other developed nations, yet impeccably ambitious and anxious to get competitive. The expansion of markets created hope for some and worry for others. Financial prosperity in the southern states was solely reliant on the blood, sweat and tears of slaves to flourish the Cotton Kingdom, the driving force in transforming and expanding the southern states’ economy. In the industrialized North, workforce labor was readily available for their needs, in contrast to how imperative slavery grew to become

With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. However, at the same time the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton meant the greater need for a large amount of cheap labor, i.e. slaves. Thus, the southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and therefore on slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture. In fact, the northern industries were purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. This disparity between the two set up a