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Slavery Task System

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2. Over the years, slavery in the United States evolved tremendously. By the mid 1700’s most slaves worked on tobacco and rice plantations in the Southern states under task systems. However, when tobacco and rice prices started dropping, southerners needed new means of revenue and slavery started diminishing. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, allowing slavery to flourish again and introducing paternalism and gang labor. While the cotton gin led to the re-establishment of slavery, it also led to the implementation of slavery into middling class homes.
During the mid and late 1700’s, tobacco and rice plantation owners noticed their profits dropping from having slaves under task systems. Task systems worked rather simply: slaves were given several acres to cultivate each day and could then use their free time to grow and sell crops from plots of land given to them by their plantation owners. They also gave …show more content…

However, with the cotton gin, nearly 30-50 pounds of cotton could be produced each day. This was a huge improvement and caused a boom of states producing cotton. Within the next few years, the United States produced ¾ of the world’s cotton. Moreover, since the cotton gin reduced the number of slaves needed in the field, plantation owners began using more slaves within their households, getting rid of task systems for gang labor. Along with the transition into gang labor came paternalism, which was the reciprocal relationship between salve and plantation owner in which the plantation owner felt fatherly and as if he provided all the necessities of life and his slaves worked for them. Additionally, the trend of slaves working in the household spread through most middling households and the dream was to acquire enough slaves to work in your house that your wife did not have to work and could become the idealized Southern

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