Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The invention of the cotton gin led to increased demands for slave labor in the American South, reversing the economic decline that had occurred in the region during the late 18th century. [38] The cotton gin thus "transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse". [39]
William Ellison Jr. (April 1790 – December 5, 1861), born April Ellison, was an American cotton gin maker and blacksmith in South Carolina, and former African-American slave who achieved considerable success as a slaveowner before the American Civil War. He eventually became a major planter and one of the wealthiest property owners in the ...
Cotton exports from the U.S. boomed after the cotton gin's appearance – from less than 500,000 pounds (230,000 kg) in 1793 to 93 million pounds (42,000,000 kg) by 1810. [12] Cotton was a staple that could be stored for long periods and shipped long distances, unlike most agricultural products.
They concluded (as did Du Bois before them) that the invention of the cotton gin in 1828, which made the processing of cotton far more efficient, led to a vast expansion of cotton plantations and the need for more slaves. Also according to Du Bois slavery was changing from a "family institution to an industrial system". [19] [20]
The cotton gin's invention led to both the burgeoning of cotton as a cash crop and to the revitalization of the agricultural slave labor system in the northern states. The U.S. economy soon became dependent upon cotton production and the sale of cotton to northern and English textile manufacturers .
The expansion of cotton cultivation upstate led to a marked increase in the labor demand, with a concomitant rise in the slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade , or international buying and selling of slaves, was outlawed by the United States in 1808, as of which date South Carolina was the only state that had not already prohibited the ...
The institution of slavery only became especially prominent in the area following two major events: the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. These events led to the westward migration of slave-owning American settlers into the area of present Missouri and Arkansas , then known as Upper Louisiana .
The rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. The U.S., divided into slave and free states, became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery.