Why Did The Cotton Gin Revolutionized America

Throughout American history, there comes a time where a great invention is crafted that comes and impacts our society greatly. Inventions usually have an overall positive affect on the world, but not in the case of the cotton gin. 1792 is when Eli Whitney invented this machine(king cotton) When Eli invented it, he had no idea of the effect that it would have to American Society. The invention of the cotton gin caused an increase of slaves in the south with harsher working conditions, and it also fluctuated the southern economy, which all played a major role in the Civil War.

1. How did the invention of the cotton gin affect slavery in the United States?

In the 1800’s, the cotton gin was invented and created an economic boom for the South, but that eventually tear the nation apart. One cotton gin used by one person can process 50 times the amount of cotton done by hand. The cotton gin made cotton processing easier and led to the use of more slave labor because the plantation owners in the South want to plant more cotton to earn more money. This event eventually causes the nation to separate based on their sectional or regional interests. The nation was divided between the North and the South. Their social and political differences contributed to the division of the nation and started the civil war, a war within a country.

     One of the most important events caused by the cotton gin was the exile of the Cherokee Indians along the Trail of Tears. As the demand for cotton and slaves grew the South began to look for more land, and discovered it in the land owned by the Cherokee Indians. The land was taken from them beginning in 1828 when the Georgia government outlawed the Cherokee government and began to take the land. This continued until 1838 when, despite a Supreme Court order, federal troops drove the last of the Cherokee from the land, that covered Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to Oklahoma where many of them died. This would not have occurred had it not been for the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin created a market for slavery. As the production of cotton rose so did the production of slavery. These enterprises needed land, which stimulated the wars against the Indians to take their land, which could then be used by cotton farmers, and plantation holders who bred slaves. Whitney’s cotton gin, and its ripple effect was having a major impact on the events in the American South.

When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794 there was not much of an impact at first, but once the 1800’s came around the cotton gin gained popularity. The cotton gin was used in the south by slaves to separate the cotton fiber from the seeds. It had teeth that pulled the fiber apart and let the seeds fall out. The north and south, both, were impacted by the cotton gin, but depending on who you ask; workers, slaves, slave/ plantation owners, mills owners; people would have different opinions.

Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts and raised on a farm. During his early years, he had a strong knack for making machines and working with technology and soon began crafting things on his own. He first began by making nails, canes, and ladies’ hatpins. Before Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, he was a student at Yale University and intended to become a private tutor after school, but stayed with a woman named Catherine Greene instead. During his stay on her plantation, he learned about cotton production and how difficult it was for cotton farmers to live a decent life. Eli’s invention of the cotton gin helped begin American manufacturing, but also had some negative effects on slaves and other products.

4. One very crucial machine shaped life in the South. Separating the seeds from a cotton was a slow process and planters needed a better way to clean cotton. To solve the planters’ problem, a young Connecticut school teacher, Eli Whitney, invented a machine that had two rollers with thin wire teeth, which would separate the seeds from the fibers when cotton was swept between the rollers. This gave workers an advantage from other workers. For example, a person using a

As demand grew, so did the fields farmers worked in, but they needed help, so along came African Americans to be forced to do work, along with Eli Whitney in 1793 to invent the cotton gin. The cotton gin allowed more cotton to be processed at a far quicker pace, allowing farmers to better keep up with demand. Whitney later invented interchangeable parts for the war of 1812. Many other inventions helped with the demands of the growing population, including the first commercial steamboat by Robert Fulton in

Eli Whitney's machine could produce up to 23 kg (50 lb) of cleaned cotton daily, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time, but Whitney failed to profit from his invention, imitations of his machine appeared, and his 1794 invention was not upheld until 1807.

     Eli Whitney's machine was the first to clean short-staple cotton. His cotton engine was made of spiked teeth that were on a revolving cylinder which when turned by a crank, pulled the cotton fiber through small openings to separate the seeds from the lint.                                    L-ter on, the gins became horse-drawn and were powered by water. As a result, the cotton was being produced at a much faster pace. The price of cotton also decreased. Cotton soon became the number one selling good.

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

Whitney’s invention possessed many useful traits, such as providing farmers with the cotton gin’s portable and simple craft design, its easy process of separating cotton seeds from cotton fiber, and consuming less time than the usual cleaning chore.

Two years later, Whitney invented the cotton gin. It worked something like a kitchen strainer. Hooks in a wooden drum caught the cotton fibers and dragged them over a wire mesh. Whitney’s gin could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a day.

Eli Whitney was an American inventor who is best known for his invention called the Cotton Gin. He was born on December 8, 1765, Westborough, MA. Where he grew up on a farm and had an fond for machine work and technology. As a child during the Revolutionary War, he became an expert at making nails from a device of his own invention that led to him later crafting canes and ladies’ hatpins. As he grew up, Whitney decided to go to Yale and graduated in 1792 with achieving a law degree. Upon graduating he accepted a job offer to read law at a plantation. There he learned of the process of green-seed cotton, which took hours of manual labor to properly clean the seed and extract the fiber. So over the year with his employers support Whitney used his engineering skills as a child to build an invention that was able to quickly and efficiently clean the cotton. This invention would be called the Cotton Gin.

The cotton gin is the most revolutionary product of our century! The beautifully handcrafted invention has improved our productivity by almost double. Since the day it was invented, our economy took a turn for the better, steadily increasing amounts of cash flowing into our pockets then to the welfare of our citizens. In our history this must be the most successful invention ever, created by the great Eli Whitney. The Cotton Gin works by separating the seeds from the cotton we use so much of. With our newfound cotton, we can