1793
THE INVENTION OF THE COTTON GIN:
Slave Labor in the Global Economy
Toward the end of the 18th century, the Southern economy was faltering. Existing slave labor was being used to grow the traditional crops of the South, such as tobacco, indigo, cotton, and rice, none of which were particularly profitable at the time. Some plantation owners began to question whether they really needed enslaved people. The upkeep of owning enslaved people was not justified by the profits owners were receiving from their plantations.
Then came the cotton gin, designed by American inventor Eli Whitney. Whitney designed the machine to help save labor for harvesting cotton. Instead, his invention was used to help perpetuate and expand the institution of slavery.
As cotton demand rose, use of the cotton gin raised the profitability of the cotton crop, leading Southern plantation owners to seek more land and thus more enslaved people to continue growing the crop. Coupled with the large demand from northern and British textile mills, cotton quickly became the featured crop of the South.
As plantation owners became wealthier, they sought even more land across the South and Southwest to grow cotton. The insatiable demand for land led to such measures as the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which confiscated swaths of former Native American territory, making more land available for cotton farming and therefore further expanding slavery across the South.
In 1808 the United States issued a ban on the transatlantic slave trade, which had been legal since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788. This measure was an attempt to reduce the number of enslaved people in the United States, but because of the continuation of the domestic slave trade, populations of enslaved people dramatically increased from around 900,000 in 1800 to around 4 million in 1860.
Slave owners encouraged this growth through natural means, and the domestic slave trade flourished. Owning and selling enslaved people within the U.S. became profitable in itself.
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