The South and Cotton:
“When George Washington first took the presidential oath, the economic wheels of the South were creaking badly”(American Pageant 11th Ed.). With all the reforms and changes happening in the 19th century, the South continues to struggle with slavery. One of the most important changes in the South concerns Eli Whitney’s cotton gin; with this new invention, cotton became the new staple-crop of the South. Now that farming and labor could be streamlined it was essential to keep slaves to run the cotton gin, but as many historians notice, machines took the place of many slaves. Cotton soon began to “eclipse” formerly important crops in the South like tobacco, rice, and sugar. Separating cotton from its seeds became easier for the slaves, however the white plantation owners raised the quotas in order to account for this change in pace. A new idea was presented as a result of the invention of the cotton gin and interchangeable parts: mass production. The South took this idea and employed slaves to do the heavy work while the plantation owners would sit back and reap the benefits. As time progressed the cultivation of cotton become a straightforward process and was later moved into factories. The shippers from the North also profited from this system and a dependency on the slaves in the South was established.
Circa 1840, the South produced more than half of the entire world’s supply of cotton; foreign nations in turn become dependent on this staple-crop. The South reacted by assuming power; they knew that England was dependent on their production of cotton and were able to take advantage of it. The South even predicted mutually assured destruction(MAD) in terms of economy and alliances; if war should ever have broken out between the North and the South, the South would assert its dominance and cut off trade with Britain. Britain in turn would be irate and blame the North; a full fledged war would break out and the South knew it would triumph. The South was in the perfect position and the government was unable to make any attempts to abolish slavery.
Questions:
1. Why do you think it was necessary for the South to ensure slavery would not be abolished?
2. Do you think the government should have acted against the South’s malicious intent?
3. What can you predict will happen?
The South needed to ensuring that slavery would not be abolished because they needed to keep their supply of workers constant. The South completely depended on slavery to keep its economy stable, but I think that's a little strange because in the textbook it talks about how small a portion of Southerns actually owned slaves. What was the majority of the South's population's place in the economy? I know that non-slave owning whites were usually poor and the gap between the rich and poor was widening, but isn't it weird that there were so many people that like... didnt even matter? lol idk i thought it was a little off
ReplyDelete*ensure... im so dumb. i dont know how to edit comments #nottechsavvy #hashtagsdontdoanythngonthisblog
ReplyDeleteTo build on Jenna's point that in fact very few southern whites actually owned slaves, I would like to say that it is interesting that despite this they still felt so strongly that slavery needed to be maintained. The question I find interesting is "what made southern, non-slave-owning whites different from non-slave-owning whites in the North?" Black slaves in no apparent way changed the lives of southern whites who did not own any.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that there were many very poor, lowly white southerners who, were it not for slaves, would be marked as the lowest class of society. The fact that slavery existed made these poor southern whites, otherwise known as landless laborers, higher in status than blacks, making them feel better about themselves.
Source: American Pageant textbook