Research Paper on Importance Of Cotton To The South

Introduction

'Cotton Is King' was a common phrase in the 1830s and 1840s, and it was used to describe the growth of the American economy. Today, we think of the phrase as one that describes the emergence of large cotton plantations in the slave Southern States, which resulted in 'the Second Middle Passage' (Chaplin 175). During these times, cotton was the number one luxury product followed by tobacco and sugar. Cotton production resulted in the turning of many black people in the United States into commodities. Cotton became the first commodity to be consumed massively around the world. The importance of the cotton industry to the South steps from its returns. These high returns affected the slave trade in the South slave states. Mainly, the essential benefit of cotton growing was the Southern economic growth as seen in the paragraphs below (176).

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The cotton industry affected the value of the slave population. According to Steven Deyle (2005), the value of slaves rose such that their value was thrice more than the combined bank investments. In addition, the value of slaves equated to about the total amount of circulating currency in the US, thrice the value of livestock, twelve times the cotton valuation and forty-eight times of the government expenses in that year. The invention of the cotton ginnery led to an increase in cotton harvesting by slaves; this led to high-profit margins to the farmers. These high profits fueled the high demand for slaves, in cycles of savage, brutality and vicious (23).

According to Gene Dattel (2009), Cotton produced by slaves led to the commercial ascendancy of New York City. Cotton production also fueled the expansion of Old Southwest territories and increase trade between Europe and US, specifically Europe. Great Britain heavily depended on American cotton, which constituted over 80% of its main industrial raw material. Textile industrial products contributed to 40% of exports from Britain. A large number of the British people were involved in cotton textiles either directly or indirectly. Cotton production system change from slave-production system to the sharecropping system rendered cotton productivity a central fuel to the growth of the economy of US for a long period of time. Cotton was the main export product from the United States from 1803 to 1937. New England also benefited from cotton production activities through the establishment of manufacturing companies. For instance, in 1860, New England had 5.14 spindles of which 75% were operational. Massachusetts had 30% of all spindles located there while Rhodes Island had 18 %. Mills in the New England used 283.7 million pounds of cotton, which was 67% of the total quantity used nationally. Fundamentally, the economy of New England depended on the textile industry (106).

Slavery in the Cotton Industry

During the antebellum era, cotton emerged as the main commercial crop in the South, bypassing tobacco and sugar in their contribution to the economy. By 1860, the US was producing two-thirds of the total amount of cotton produced all over the world. In the year 1793, Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin- Cotton a machine that separated cottonseeds from the wool. Black American slaves in the South assisted the industrial revolution in Great Britain and the US in the 19th century through the picking and processing of cotton. Slave states had 3.2 million slaves out of which 1.8 million produced cotton (Bailey 36). By 1860, two billion pounds of cotton was produced by slaves per year. The slaves who enormously contributed to the cotton production began the process of cotton production by bush clearing. Vegetation fell to the ax as slaves worked to clear the bushes to create land to grow cotton. After the land clearing, slaves plowed the land and planted cottonseeds. Since land available to grow cotton almost seemed limitless, the white planters of cotton were always in constant search for land to grow cotton. Slaves made up the vanguard of broadening of America towards the West. Planting season occurred in the months of March and April when cottonseeds were sowed in rows. From April to August, slaves took care of the plants through weeding, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. After the plants had flowered and begun producing bolls, all slaves in the plantation worked together in handpicking cotton from the cotton bolls. Slaves were required to fill as many sacks as possible, and a white supervisor made use of the lash to ensure the slaves worked faster (39).

Cotton farmers estimated the cotton they were capable of producing based on slaves count. Planters had put expectations on the slaves to work on a ten-acre piece of land with cotton and harvest 200 pounds of cotton daily (Bailey 40). Due to these high expectations, slaves were always under pressure to meet the daily expectations otherwise a white master would whip those who failed to pick less than expected. The working hours of the slaves were from sunrise to sunset, with a lunchtime break of mere ten minutes during harvesting season. The slaves were given little food to eat at lunchtime because the white planters wanted to increase profits by cutting down the cost of food. Other white planters of cotton understood feeding the slaves would increase productivity and hence gave the slaves what they thought would ensure production of a healthy crop. Cotton picking happened seven times per season since the crop produced bolls as it grew through fall and winter (43). After a whole day of picking cotton, the slaves performed other chores such as caring for animals. In fact, the slaves reared their animal and had gardens, which they attended to after retiring from daily work in the plantations, to assist them to get some food. Slaves were also involved in separating the cotton seeds from the fiber using the gin, which assisted them to separate the seeds from the cotton (45).

Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin Invention And Its Effects To The South

Eli Whitney, a citizen of the United States, invented the cotton gin in 1794. The cotton gin is a machine that increased the processing speed of removing seeds from the cotton. By the middle of the 19th century, cotton was the main export product from the United States by the mid-19th century. However, the gin did not make much money for Whitney because of the violation of patent rights. The invention of the cotton gin offered the South cotton planters a reason for maintaining and expanding slavery in the cotton fields even as many Americans advocated for its abolishment (Bacon 1). The demand for more slaves to work in the cotton plantations was due to the much profit the white planters got from the business. Slave importation increased until the Congress banned the slave business in 1808. Before the ban, 80,000 Africans had been imported to the US as slaves from 1790. The number of US states that practiced slavery rose from six to fifteen states. Whitney's invention made the cotton industry in the South blossom. Before the cotton gin was invented, separating seeds from the fiber was a tedious work and an unprofitable investment. However, with the invention of the cotton gin, cotton processing became easier leading to a rise in the availability of cheaper clothes (2). This invention revolutionized an important phase of cotton processing. The increase in cotton production coincided with other inventions during the industrial revolution. For instance, the steamboat was invented, which increased the rate of cotton shipping on the Mississippi River. Moreover, machinery that spun and wove cotton more efficiently were invented which increased value on the cotton produced in the United States. These inventions and others fueled by cotton production increased profits due to the high production rates, resulting in sending the cotton industry on an astrological trajectory. By the mid-19th century, US produced 65% of the world's cotton and cotton exports topped the list of America's imports (Gunderson, et al. 2007)

The North was also involved with the slave business because the Northern economy offered many services that slave owners in the south needed. Therefore, the cotton gin invention had an impact on the Northern economy. For instance, Northern companies insured slaves and offered loan to slave owners in the south. The South did not have many factories that would provide as many goods and services as the people's want, so the North sold various kinds of goods to the Southern people. Moreover, some of the cotton grown in the south was processed to textiles in textile factories in the North. All these factories expanded after the cotton gin invention due to the increased number of slaves (Aboukhadijeh 2012).

Works Cited

Aboukhadijeh, F. "King Cotton" StudyNotes.org. Study Notes, LLC., 17 Nov. 2012. Accessed on 21 Nov. 2018. https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/king-cotton

Bacon, D. F. Effect of the Invention of the Cotton-Gin on the Production of Cotton. New Haven: American Journal of Science, n.d. Print.

Bailey, Ronald. "The other side of slavery: Black labor, cotton, and textile industrialization in Great Britain and the United States." Agricultural History 68.2 (1994): 35-50.

Chaplin, Joyce E. "Creating a Cotton South in Georgia and South Carolina, 1760-1815." The Journal of Southern History 57.2 (1991): 171-200.

Dattel, Gene. Cotton and Race in the Making of America: the human costs of economic power. Government Institutes, 2009.

Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005. Print.

Gunderson, Jessica, Gerry Acerno, Rodney Ramos, and Charles Barnett. Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin. Mankato, Minn: Capstone Press, 2007. Internet resource.