Why Is Slavery Important Today

As we already noted – in the 1800s expediency of slavery was disputed. While industrial North almost abandoned bondage, by the early 19th century, slavery was almost exclusively confined to the South, home to more than 90 percent of American blacks (Barney W., p. 61). Agrarian South needed free labor force in order to stimulate economic growth. In particular, whites exploited blacks in textile production. This conditioned the differences in economic and social development of the North and South, and opposing viewpoints on the social structure. “Northerners now saw slavery as a barbaric relic from the past, a barrier to secular and Christian progress that contradicted the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and degraded the free-labor aspirations of Northern society” (Barney W., p. 63).

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 may have helped produce abundant amounts of cotton cheaply, but it also cursed those who were tangled in the grip of this “peculiar institution”.

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

Due to this, the economy of America at this period of time was centred around cotton and as Clement Eaton stated, 'After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the tempo of life in the South quickened.' The industry was able to achieve large profits through the use of slaves-the cheapest labour of all-and eventually 'Three-fourths of the world's supply of cotton came from the southern states.'

After the 1820s, the domestic slave trade was commonly accepted as a ‘big business’, and the rise of cotton cultivation (King Cotton phenomenon) together with the federal ban on the slave import from Africa drove profits ever higher. As Gudmestad pointed out, by now the migration of white population to the West had declined, and the demand for work force

The South’s agriculture was predominantly dependent on slave labor prior to the Civil War. Although the North continued to industrialize and improve its technology to advance their farming, the South stuck to their tradition of using slaves, which proved to be inefficient. By 1860, the productivity of the North was almost double of that of the South, and the reason is revealed in this article. When he was traveling short distances, he found the slaves to be completely inefficient. Only few slaves on a farm were capable of working for their masters, others were often too young, too old, or too ill to work. The white men didn’t like work because of their belief that work was meant for slaves, and the slaves that worked never gave their best effort, for they were lacking

The plantations in the South would supply large amounts of cotton to textile mills in the North (“The Textile Industry”, par. 3). The economy in the North was completely dependent on the textile industry; and the textile industry was dependent on cotton which was picked and harvested by the slaves in the South. The North would sell the cotton products that they had made back to the South (Gates Jr, par. 7). Britain was also dependent on cotton from the United States. “Britain, the most powerful nation in the world, relied on slave-produced American cotton for over 80 per cent of its essential industrial raw material. English textile mills accounted for 40 percent of Britain’s exports. One-fifth of Britain’s twenty-two million people were directly or indirectly involved with cotton textiles” (Gates Jr, par. 6). The cotton gin allowed for increased cotton production, which allowed for an increase in textile mills and an increase in production of goods.

The nineteenth century was a time of changes in the history in the United States of America, which consequently lead to other things in the world to change as well. There is no doubt about the role that cotton played in this century and the way societies and economies were affected. The creation of new technologies, the upsurge of slavery in the South and the division of a whole nation are just a few of the events cotton was part of Throughout the years this commodity brought wealth to those either who worked with it. During late nineteenth century cotton suffered a fall during the civil war; however, though it tremendously harmed the Confederacy's economy, it was the boll weevil was that took the king's crown.

We think today that this is a description of a slavery country that grows the economy, which leads to the creation of many elements, but important things that are not just a common phenomenon but a global phenomenon. Cotton is one of the first in the world to be made of sugar and tobacco, and it is also the most successful product of millions of blacks in American production.

During the early 1800’s the demand for cotton had risen and it was now “King” of plantations in the southern region of the United States, where the climate was best suited. Now more then ever, slavery had become an essential component of most every cotton producing plantation. The Southerners knew slavery was wrong, but made justifications for it; within a span of 30 years these justifications had changed due to abolitionist movements (in the northern half of the county) and economic reasons which made cotton and slavery more profitable than ever.

The rapid gain in wealth in the U.S was from the constant supply of cheap and high-quality cotton. Cotton encompassed a total of 50-60% of the nation’s exports which in turn provided raw cotton for England’s textile mills. This ability to produce lots of high-quality cotton was due to their use free labor. Up until 1850 when it started to decline along with the use of slavery the cotton was the most important export. The U.S was eventually exporting 4.9 million bales annually, up until the civil war. Farmers in the South that sold raw materials had to go through the Northern middlemen, as they had a monopoly on

Between 1820 and 1860 the American economy prospered as it industrialized and experienced a doubling of its per capita income and a 2% growth in its real per capita output. (Nash, et al., 2007., p. 282) One contributing factor to this growth was the influence of Great Britain’s industrial revolution and also it’s textile industry’s demand for southern cotton. (Nash, et al., 2007., pp. 283, 312) The demand that many European countries had for southern cotton not only induced a significant expansion of slavery, which soared from 1.5 million in 1820 to 4 million by 1860, but also made the southern United States the largest producer of cotton in the world and represented more than half of the nation’s exports. (Nash, et al., 2007., pp. 312 ,315)

As World War II began to come to an end, the United States cotton industry started to become more anxious about what the future would entail for them. With scientific and technological advances on the rise, it would allow more logical and systematic farming and with that, came the increase of productivity at a much more rapid pace. These changes led the U.S. cotton industry to anticipate the downfall of world markets while synthetic fibers such as acrylic, nylon, polyester, and spandex gained more popularity. Such developments harbored national implications because not only did the one and a half million growers across the Cotton Belt produce the country’s most significant commercial crop, but cotton farming in general was the southern way

According Bonner,” The invention of the cotton gin was soon followed by the opening of vast areas of rich cotton lands throughout the lower South. Thus occurred a rapid development of the Cotton Kingdom where labor was exceedingly scarce in proportion to the vast wilderness which beckoned prospective growers.” This information is relevant in the way that the technologies used in the 1840s were the earlier blueprints for inventions today.