What Were The Living And Working Conditions Of Slaves Throughout The South?

Slavery in the United States first started in 1619, when African slaves were transported to Jamestown, a settlement in the colony in Virginia. These slaves were brought to the United States primarily to help with the making of crops, especially tobacco. The practice of slavery remained present throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in other colonies of the United States, which helped build and strengthen the American economy as a whole. In 1793, the cotton gin was invented, which triggered the immense importance of the practice of slavery towards the success of the economy in the southern parts of the United States. On the other hand, the northern parts of the United States experienced a

Along with the demand for cotton came a demand for labor. Black slaves from Africa were used to hand pick cotton in cotton fields, a tedious and daunting job. After Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, cotton production skyrocketed from the average 3,000 bails per year to 300,000 bails per year. Unlike the north, the south lacked transportation improvements such as railways, roads, and water canals.

In 1793 the cotton industry bloomed because of Eli Whitney when he invented the cotton gin. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes for white plantation owners in the antebellum South. “American inventor Eli Whitney and his cotton gin improved the cleaning of raw cotton, facilitating the continuing growth of the industry in many locales.” This proves that the cotton industry rose after the gin was invented. It is evident that Eli Whitney played a major part of the growth of the cotton industry. Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry.

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.

Slavery has been a major component of human civilization all throughout history. People turn to slavery for many reasons, such as fear of different ethnicities and fear that these new foreign people will take over land that is not theirs. The conditions under which slaves work and live varies greatly by the time and location of which the slaves lived. Slaves play a major role in their society and contribute greatly to their communities, often forming one of the largest masses of the population. Though the accuracy of the information from primary sources may be tainted with exaggeration and bias, it is easy to deduce from primary works the treatment of slaves and the working and living conditions surrounding them. According to many sources,

The Industrial Revolution brought Southern landowners an invention that they adopted and embraced: The Cotton Gin. Invented by Eli Whitney, the cotton gin made slavery profitable and made cotton the nation's number one export . The South also adopted the steam engine, mainly to aid the cotton gin and to use on steamships to transport cotton. Ironically, the success of the cotton gin, by fostering slavery, helped to separate the two sides of the country and bring about the Civil War .

Southerner farmers had previously attempted to grow cotton, some the American society desperately lacked, and however these farmers soon gave up and decide to focus on producing rice and tobacco crops. Cotton had proved to be far too intense labor and was extremely inefficient. It would take one slave a whole workday to separate only one pound of cottonseed from the fibers of the plant. So when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which was able to separate the seeds from the fibers with ease, it allowed slaves to produce upwards of fifty pounds of cotton in a workday. This invention revolutionized the cotton industry, the southerners were producing and the crop and harvesting so that the northerners could manufacture cotton

The cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney in 1794 had a powerful impact on the slavery business and the Civil War. It allowed one slave to produce much more cotton, making the demand for cotton and slaves much higher, ultimately provoking the civil war and causing much more pain and suffering than what was needed.

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 institution of slavery was essential to every characteristic that helped mold the United States from the sixteenth century on to the nineteenth century. Throughout the colonial and antebellum period, the majority of slaves lived in the South. After the American Revolution, the use of slaves began to die down because the consumption of tobacco fluctuated too much. However, in 1793, Eli Whitney created the cotton gin and this made things simpler for textile mills. Soon enough, cotton replaced tobacco as the main crop in the South and it made slavery profitable again. Hence the phrase stated by Senator James H. Hammond during the 1850s, “You dare not make war on cotton. No power on Earth dare make upon it. Cotton is King.” (366). The invention of the cotton gin deepened the South’s dependence on slavery (363). Between the 1800

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

From 1775-1830, America saw its slavery institution expand. One major factor that contributed to the growth of enslaved African Americans was the increase in agriculture in the South. Cotton, a long standing staple crop of the southern states, was a very labor intensive crop to harvest. Because of this need for labor, many plantation owners and farmers continued to purchase slaves. In addition to the fact that cotton was very laborious to pick, plantation owners wanted more and more land to plant the crop on because it was such a success. As more land was obtained, more slaves were needed to work the land. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. This invention sparked an increase in the number of enslaved African Americans in the South

As far back as 84 years before the war, legal changes to slavery were already beginning to occur in the Northern states. From 1777 to 1804, majority of the north adapted one of three lawful ways of freeing slaves. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts chose to abolish slavery all together. While New York, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey opted for the gradual emancipation, the states on the south of their borders chose something else. In Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, where slaves were still a vital part of their workforce, only individual cases of emancipation were granted to some. (Roark et al., p. 259) At around the same time in 1793, the Southern states were introduced to a new invention that successfully altered their whole economy. The creation of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin made production of cotton easier and faster. This in turn, enabled the owners of the machine the ability to cater to the high demands of cotton worldwide. Unfortunately for the slaves in the South, cotton gins still required operation by an actual person, and the cotton gins was only used for one step (although separating the seeds from the cotton was the most difficult) out of the many steps

Therefore, the population of slaves started to grow again in the 1790s and spread into other lands that became the cotton belt (Clifford, 2005). At round 1793, cotton cultivation expanded into large scale as a result of the invention of gin. The slaves in the southern states were used as laborers in spite of the American Revolution’s natural rights philosophy (Clifford, 2005). According to Clifford (2005), the slave owners started to improve the lives of their slaves on the cotton plantations after a

The north took on the industrial way of life, large cities emerged as more people began to migrate to the U.S. as well as within it. The population continuously increase,this part of the country appeared to be crowded. The north seemed to be doing well with its new practices, on the other hand the south was developing quite differently. The geography of the south allowed a different type of development, really the continuance of the traditional farming/plantation systems, though, the south did take on new developments in technology . Production of these plantations require the use of African American slaves, these slaves maintain the fields and help to produce staple crops that were essential to their economy, cash crops like tobacco, and “King cotton” helped to shape southern society. Around 1793 when slavery was starting to die out the cotton gin was created, this changed the game for plantation/slave owners. Invented by Eli Whitney, the cotton gin separated seeds from the cotton, this crop became very popular and slavery more than doubled. After that, slavery stayed persistent in the south even though various parts of the country had abolished, or prohibited