Introduction
The cotton plant is a shrub native to subtropical and tropical regions around the globe including Africa, India and America. In the old and contemporary world, cotton was independently domesticated and the resulting fiber is in most cases spun into thread and used to make soft and breathable textiles. The use of cotton fabric can be dated back to prehistoric times; archeologists have excavated fragments cotton fabric dated from 5000 B.C in Indus valley and Mexico. Even though cotton has been cultivated since the distant past, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered its cost and led to its widespread use up to date. A cotton gin is a machine that easily and quickly detaches cotton fibers from their seeds hence allowing for greater productivity as opposed to doing it manually. The United States has been the largest exporter of cotton for many years while china is the largest producer yet most of its cotton is used domestically. It not established where cotton originated but it is acknowledged to have been cultivated and finished into fabric by at least 3000 B.C. Christopher Columbus discovered cotton in 1492 and by 1556, American settlers begun to grow it. The southern states were ideal because cotton grows well in warm climates. The crops first boom was fueled by the industrial revolution whereby as textiles became Americas leading export the demand for fiber expanded and so did the demand for slaves.
Slavery in the United States existed between the 18th and 19th century. Since the early colonial days slavery was practiced in the British North America and by the time of the declaration of independence, the practice was well established (Bruccoli et al, 43). Later, however, abolitionism spread in the north while expansion of the cotton industry in the south caused them to strongly identify with slavery and attempts to extend it to the new western territories. The sudden increase in cotton production increased the slave system intensely in the south leading to a complex; chain of command and social order that affected both blacks and whites. This paper provided an insight to how the cotton industry promoted and prolonged slavery especially in the south.
Discussion
Eli Whitney born on 1765 invented the cotton gin in 1794, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton. Despite the success of his invention, Whitney made little money due to patent infringement issues. He is however credited as the pioneer of American manufacturing following his major contract to construct muskets for the United States government. He advocated for the idea of interchangeable, standardized and identical parts that enabled a faster assembly and easier repair in various devices. Before the invention of the cotton gin, cotton production required a considerable amount of labor to wash and separate the fibers from seeds. The cotton gin led to massive expansion in the production of cotton in the United States especially in the south. The south therefore became more dependent on plantations and slavery making plantation agriculture the largest sector of the economy. The impact of the cotton gin was intensely felt on the final product supplied to the market (Rodriguez, 107). While it took one slave about 10 hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds; a team of three or two slaves using the cotton gin could produce up to fifty pound of cotton in one day. This implied that the number of slaves rose concurrently with the increase in cotton production citing census report that indicate in the year 1790, slaves were about seven hundred thousand and by the year 1850, they increased to about 3.2 million. The black belt region consisted of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi and was duped so because over half the population was black. The northern economy was also influenced in that although cotton was being produced in the south, it was exported from northern ports enabling the United States to dominate the cotton industry by mid 1800s (Farrow et al, 222).
The cotton gin invention by Eli Whitney did not foresee the negative consequences that it would bring to the society and the most significant of this was the expansion of slavery. Although the cotton gin minimized the labor required to separate cotton fibers from seeds, it increased the need for slaves to grow and pick cotton. Cotton growing became so profitable that it increased the demand for slave labor and land. The importation of slaves from Africa became intense and by the 1808, southerners had imported eighty thousand slaves and by 1860, one in every three southerners was a slave (Stevenson, 171). Plantations begun to be established all over the southern states as the profitability of cotton growing was quite evident. A plantation refers to a large estate used for the production of a selected crop and is usually worked on by residents. In the United States, almost all plantations in the south included a slave quarter that was home to hundreds of slaves. Statistics indicate that about 75% of slaves in the United States were involved in the production of cotton, an industry that became so profitable that at one point the south had the highest concentration of millionaires around the globe.
African slave labor was obtained from forcibly transported African and used to extensively work on plantations in the American colonies. Several notable economists such as Karl Marx and Eric Williams agreed that the existing global capitalist economy was greatly based on the making and produce of many of slave labor camps located in colonial plantations exploiting millions of abducted Africans. The typical low wages paid to slaves were the basis of plantation profitability especially in the south. According to Karl Marx, capitalism refers to a system whereby land owners exploit laborers by depriving them of value that they create. The capitalist profit results from surplus value and the treatment of laborers as a commodity leads to people valuing things in terms of their price rather than utility. The South’s over reliance on cotton production tied it economically to the plantation system and white supremacy racially (Inikori, 145). The political domination and cultural refinement of the rather small plantation nobility covered slavery’s great economic and social costs for both whites and blacks. Slaves received minimal pay to ensure that they did not have the means to revolt but rather be loyal to the only source of livelihood. It has been pointed out that most slave owners had a few slaves and most slaves were held by few large planters. However, majority of whites supported racial supremacy and slavery as they hoped to become slave owners someday and the white racial identity provided them with a sense of superiority over blacks.
African slavery thrived in the south in an unthinkable manner that in most cases people forget that that there had been slaves in the British old colonies. Slavery was promoted by victims being auctioned openly well known areas such as the shadow of congregational churches in Rhodes Island and in Merchant’s coffee house of New York. Northern heroes of American Revolution such as the family of Abraham Lincoln owned slaves when they lived in Pennsylvania during colonial times. The treatment of slaves within the region varied considerably and within the cycle of the cruel system, slaves desired free will and resisted in order to uphold their humanity including their family unit life. The materialization of small but energetic radical groups (abolitionist movement) in 1830s led to an intense proslavery backlash in the south and a slow but sensible antislavery response in the north (Rayner, 277). Slaves struggled to be recognized as humans rather than being viewed as commodities. Some slave owners who fathered children with slaves denied them and this caused tension between slaves and their masters. It was not strange to hear of occasions when a male slave confronted his master who has violated his wife. Later on the children born in slave farm wanted to be recognized as African-Americans rather than black. When slavery was abolished in the south, most of the freed slaves remained there in the same plantations and farms and became laborers or sharecroppers. The cotton gin invention had an unintentional of effect on American slavery and is also cited as the ultimate cause of American civil war. Since the beginning of the 19th century to the United States civil war, the southern states had accumulated incredible wealth with their plantation lifestyle. However, their loss in the civil war transformed the region forever. The British and the French opted for cotton from Egypt as it was produced more ethically.
Conclusion
Slavery was widely practiced through out the British and American colonies between the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. The African slaves greatly contributed to the construction of the economic basis of a new and powerful nation. The cotton gin contributed to and prolonged slavery in America especially in the south. Before its invention, cotton was a hard cash crop to prepare for the market because of the many little pieces of things stuck to the cotton itself. Cotton was therefore fast losing its cotton its cash crop statues. However when it was easier to clean and make ready cotton for the market, plantation owners were making great profits. Slaves were required to grow, harvest and clean cotton than ever before. This can be interpreted to imply that the cotton gin prolonged slavery in the United States.
The international slave trade was prohibited since 1808 but the internal slave trade continued to increase with the slave population peaking at four million before abolition. The mid 19th century was characterized by America’s westward expansion together with a growing abolition in the north activities that provoked a great debate over the pros and cons of slavery that broke the nation the civil war. Although slavery was abolished, its legacy continued to influence the American history through the years of reconstruction to civil rights groups that materialized in 1960 (Davis, 244). The United States is still the leading producer of fiber citing cotton sales that cost more that 5 billion dollars at the farm level only. Annual revenue generated after the farm level totals up to one hundred billion dollars. Around the globe cotton is still the most widely used fiber.
Work cited
Bruccoli, Matthew J, Richard Layman, and Mark G. Malvasi. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere, Circa 1500 - 1888. Detroit [u.a.: Thomson/Gale, 2003. Print.
Davis, David B. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006. Internet resource.
Farrow, Anne, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank. Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. Internet resource.
Inikori, Joseph E. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Durham [u.a.: Duke Univ. Press, 1992. Print.
Rayner, Mary I. Wine and Slaves: The Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806-1834. , 1986. Print.
Rodriguez, Junius P. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2007. Internet resource.
Stevenson, Brenda E. Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Internet resource.
