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The cotton gin transformed Southern agriculture and the national economy. [11] Southern cotton found ready markets in Europe and in the burgeoning textile mills of New England. Cotton exports from the U.S. boomed after the cotton gin's appearance – from less than 500,000 pounds (230,000 kg) in 1793 to 93 million pounds (42,000,000 kg) by 1810 ...
The invention of the cotton gin led to increased demands for slave labor in the American South, reversing the economic decline that had occurred in the region during the late 18th century. [38] The cotton gin thus "transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse". [39]
After invention of the cotton gin made profitable the processing of short-staple cotton, there was a major push by whites to develop lands in the Deep South for such cultivation. This greatly increased the demand for slave labor, especially after the US ended the legal Atlantic slave trade in 1808. The rate of manumission fell sharply in ...
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As cotton-producing estates grew in size, so did the number of slaveholders and the average number of enslaved people held. [42] [41] A cotton plantation normally had a cotton gin house, where the cotton gin was used to remove the seeds from raw cotton. After ginning, the cotton had to be baled before it could be warehoused and transported to ...
As industrial technologies including the cotton gin made slavery even more profitable, Southern states refused to ban slavery- perpetuating the division of the United States between free and slave states. Tensions escalated as the United States expanded west ward (also retroactively causing the Southeast region to also expand to the west.
They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. But the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin, greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies
"The First Cotton Gin" conjectural image from 1869. Cotton was at first a small-scale crop in the South. Cotton farming boomed following the improvement of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. [59] It was 50 times more productive at removing the seeds than with a roller. Soon, large cotton plantations, based on slave labor, expanded in the richest ...