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US history
Course: US history > Unit 4
Lesson 3: Culture and reform in the early nineteenth century- The Second Great Awakening - origins and major ideas
- The Second Great Awakening - influence of the Market Revolution
- The Second Great Awakening - reform and religious movements
- Transcendentalism
- The development of an American culture
- Antebellum communal experiments
- The early temperance movement - origins
- The early temperance movement - spread and temporary decline
- Women's labor
- Women's rights and the Seneca Falls Convention
- African Americans in the Early Republic
- The Cotton Kingdom
- The society of the South in the early republic
- Culture and reform in the early nineteenth century
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The Cotton Kingdom
Overview
- During the first half of the nineteenth century, demand for cotton led to the expansion of plantation slavery.
- By 1850, enslaved people were growing cotton from South Carolina to Texas.
The Cotton Kingdom
During the early nineteenth century, as the Market Revolution transformed the American economy of the North and West, the South was undergoing a different transformation.
For nearly two centuries, southern plantations had focused on producing tobacco, rice, and sugar for national and international markets. Tobacco quickly exhausted the soil, as did cotton, which was so time-consuming to process that it was hardly profitable as a cash crop. In the late 1700s, when enthusiasm for liberty was high and profits from slavery were low, some observers predicted that the institution would soon die out altogether in the United States.
But in 1850, contrary to those predictions, slavery was very much alive and well—in fact, there were more enslaved people living in the United States than ever before, and the cotton they produced accounted for more than half the value of US exports. Instead of following the path toward extinction, the institution of slavery thrived and expanded in the first half of the nineteenth century.
What changed?
An insatiable hunger for cotton
First, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. The gin transformed cotton into a profitable crop by reducing its processing time and making large-scale cultivation possible.
At the same time, the first Industrial Revolution centered on the creation of cotton fabric in water-powered mills. The textile mills of New England and Great Britain demanded cotton, and the American South supplied it. By 1820, the United States was more than growing 30 times as much cotton as it had when Whitney invented the gin, making it the world’s leading supplier.
The mills’ insatiable hunger for cotton kept prices high, so that white southern farmers demanded ever more land, and ever more enslaved people, to grow it.
Cotton and westward expansion
In the Deep South, where the rich soil was ideal for growing cotton, westward expansion meant more acres to cultivate “white gold.” As the United States acquired western lands through the Louisiana Purchase and later the Mexican Cession, the “pioneer” on the southern frontier was not a lone white farmer breaking the wilderness but rather an enslaved African American working in a gang-labor system.
Consequently, by 1850, the states of the Deep South had become a “cotton kingdom,” a vast expanse of cotton plantations that extended from the South Carolina lowcountry to East Texas. The Deep South was unique in its single-minded focus on agriculture; there was little industrial activity and its only noteworthy cities (New Orleans and Charleston) were ports focused on shipping cotton to international markets. While urbanization and industrialization transformed the North over the first half of the nineteenth century, the South in 1850 was much the same as in 1800—only a lot larger.
But if the South was “peculiar” among US regions in its devotion to slavery and agriculture, its product was not. Cotton was the backbone of the US economy in the nineteenth century: northern textile mills spun it into cloth for sale, southern planters sold it to Europe and purchased manufactured goods in turn, and New York speculators loaned money for the purchase of land and slaves.
Little wonder that Senator James Henry Hammond declared that the “whole civilized world” would topple if the South ceased to supply cotton. “Cotton,” he declared, “is king.”
What do you think?
Why did slavery expand in the nineteenth century instead of dying out, as some Americans had predicted after the Revolution?
How did the South's focus on cotton cultivation separate it from the North? How did cotton unite the two regions?
Want to join the conversation?
Did Eli Whitney really invent the Cotton Gin? I heard it was a slave.(3 votes)
I can't imagine a slave would have the time, resources, or motivation to do that.(12 votes)
Why did slavery expand in the nineteenth century instead of dying out, as some Americans had predicted after the Revolution?(4 votes)
It expanded drastically because of the invention of the cotton gin. Before this invention, cotton was extremely labor-intensive to produce, so there wasn't much gain in producing it. But the cotton gin changed all of that.
The cotton gin did the hardest part of the process (removing the seeds from the cotton) much more efficiently than before. Now cotton was a cash crop. Growers bought more land to plant it, purchased more cotton gins to refine cotton, and bought more slaves to man the system.
Do you see the impact of the cotton gin on slavery now?(9 votes)
- Do the slave had children with their chief ?(1 vote)
- Yes, there are incidents where slaves and their owners had a baby. But, usually, there was not a choice for the slave woman if her owner wanted to have a baby. She could have been whipped, maimed, or killed if she did not listen to her owners' command. You can see the horrors in the 19th century.(11 votes)
If the cotton gin was never invented would slavery died out?(4 votes)
No. It would not have died out of itself. The end of slavery came about by political means and the shedding of much blood.(6 votes)
- Northern states demanded cotton from southern states, so why were there still so many people were anti-slavery? were the revolutionary ideals and the second great awakening that strong to beat people's desire for prosperity?(4 votes)
The fact there was a high demand for cotton for the cotton mills in the north does not necessarily mean that the average person in the north wanted slavery to continue. It's possible that the owners of the cotton mills wanted slavery to continue in that it supplied cotton to mill at a price allowing the cotton mill owners to make a profit. However, that does not necessarily mean that the average person in the north supported slavery. I need to research that premise further. Just proposing that as a possible explanation.(4 votes)
- why did this happen(2 votes)
Because greedy humans do wicked things. It's very sad, and we should do all we can to prevent it from ever happening again, and to stop it in places where it's still practiced.(8 votes)
- Was the cotton gin very dangerous to use? I heard you could get something cut.(2 votes)
- As with many types of industrial equipment through the ages, the early models were dangerous. The current models are similarly dangerous, but have many safety features to forestall accidents. Still, one working with any kind of power equipment or industrial machinery should always be careful.(2 votes)
Ironically, Eli Whitney actually thought that his invention would end slavery by making cotton processing so easy that the plantation owners wouldn't need slave labor anymore. He was dead wrong.(1 vote)- Slavery expanded instead of dying out in the nineteenth century because, America more specifically the south was able to accumulate more land which happened to be equitable in being able to grow crops of cotton. The more land that is acquired for cotton means the people who are working these crops are more than likely slaves since this was the south’s main source of labor.(1 vote)
- 1. Because of how profitable cotton was, more cotton was needed to be produced but cotton gins needed labor to work them. this led to a rapid increase in slavery as many African slaves were the unskilled laborers that southerners needed for their growing cotton industry. The more profit was gained from cotton, the more it would eventually expand into the west
2. The South heavily focused on producing cotton unlike the North because it had more of an agricultural-based economy. The South really needed these cotton industries to grow because that was their main cash crop, their main source of income that prove to be extremely profitable and essential for getting manufactured goods from Europe that was needed for their growing industries. Meanwhile, the North wasn't as heavily focused on cotton as their industrialized economy relied on more goods like firearms than just cotton to make a profit. However, the North still needed cotton from the South for their textile mills as they also saw how profitable cotton was as it was highly demanded in Europe.(1 vote)