Discussion Topic
Impact of Cotton and Slavery on Southern Development and North-South Relations
Summary:
The South's development was heavily influenced by cotton production and slavery, with cotton becoming the cornerstone of its economy thanks to the invention of the cotton gin. This led to wealth among plantation owners but also entrenched social and economic disparities, including reliance on slave labor and limited investment in infrastructure and education. North-South relations were complex; economically interdependent due to cotton but divided over slavery, contributing to tensions that eventually led to the Civil War.
What role did cotton production and slavery play in the South's development?
While tobacco and rice were the early favorite crops among southern growers across the South, it was cotton that would reign supreme, a development facilitated by the invention of the cotton gin in the late eighteenth century. By the time of the Civil War, in fact, cotton was the most important crop and became the bedrock of the economy of the American South. More than those other crops, cotton could be produced cheaply and efficiently, and Southern plantation owners grew wealthy selling it both domestically and, of increasing importance, internationally. Cotton, in short, was the Southern economy. With the expansion in the United States and in Great Britain of textile industries, which employed innumerable people, the demand for cotton increased, further fueling both Southern coffers and, of enormous significance, the South’s determination to preserve another side of the economic equation on which the competitiveness of Southern-produced cotton depended, cheap labor.
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the Southern economy. With the expansion in the United States and in Great Britain of textile industries, which employed innumerable people, the demand for cotton increased, further fueling both Southern coffers and, of enormous significance, the South’s determination to preserve another side of the economic equation on which the competitiveness of Southern-produced cotton depended, cheap labor.
The importance of cheap labor for the cotton farmers was substantial. The cheapest labor pool available was the vast market in slaves forcibly brought across the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa. The American South, then, became overly dependent on both cotton and slaves to work in the fields. The two commodities—one agricultural and the other human—contributed to the growth of the Southern economy and to the development of that region’s social structure and culture. Plantation owners lived ostentatiously on large estates, with slaves exploited for household chores as well as for working in the cotton fields.
As not all white Southerners were wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, the fact of slavery further exacerbated their (the poor white people's) plight. Small farms operated by these poorer white people could not hope to compete with the large plantation owners and the latter’s slave labor. A class of white people emerged, therefore, that fell not quite between the plantation owners and their slaves but kind of parallel to that of the slaves. The desperately poor communities of Southern regions like the Appalachians, therefore, remain a legacy of this dysfunctional social system.
A final legacy of the cotton/slave economy that emerged following the Civil War and the era of Reconstruction involved mass migrations of newly-freed slaves to northern states—a development that served to shift the labor market away from agriculture and toward the more industrialized North. Southern society as the wealthy plantation owners had known it for generations was gone and would not come back.
References
Cotton production was critical to the economic success of the South, and slavery was a crucial (albeit horrific and inhumane) means of meeting the high demands of that industry.
The American South evolved as an agrarian society in which crops like tobacco, sugar, rice, wheat, hemp, and, of course, cotton supported the economy. Cotton, in particular, was in huge demand in the nineteenth century. It was largely responsible for the boom in the production of textiles overseas.
In fact, cotton served as the leading American export from 1803 to 1937 and was foundational to the Industrial Revolution; 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton being used in Great Britain were directly produced in the South. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney expedited this process, but it was truly slavery that made it possible in the first place.
Karl Marx once commented, "Without slavery, you have no cotton."
In order to keep up with the European demand for cotton, the transatlantic slave trade provided forced laborers directly from Africa. In addition to this tragic violation of human rights and life, over a million African Americans living in the Upper South were sold off to the Deep South to feed "King Cotton."
Socially speaking, it is clear that the demand for cotton prolonged slavery and, in doing so, arguably contributed to causing the Civil War. However, it also kept America in good standing with Europe because of the European market's dependency on cotton exports.
How did cotton production and slavery affect North-South relations?
The South's reliance on these things affected its relations with the North in complex ways.
On the one hand, it actually tied the North and the South together. The South's economy was based so heavily on cotton that it needed many things from the North. Northern companies sold everything from shoes to insurance to Southern plantation owners. To this extent, the relations were at least somewhat good.
On the other hand, the reliance on slavery also led to the deep divisions between the two regions that caused the Civil War. This can be seen most clearly in the development of the abolitionist movement. Most Northerners were not abolitionist, but the issue of abolitionism did illustrate the ways in which slavery drove a wedge between the two regions.