King Cotton
Cotton is King: In the late eighteenth century, a recent Yale graduate named Eli Whitney had aspirations of practicing law. However, like many modern college graduates, Whitney had a debt to repay for his education. To that end, Whitney left his home in Massachusetts to take a tutoring position on a Georgia plantation.
Whitney found himself in the midst of an active agricultural economy. Tobacco, rice, and sugar were vital crops, and cotton cultivation was showing great promise. A stable slave culture was in place in the south, providing labor for southern plantations. However, the time-consuming process for harvesting cotton limited the prosperity of plantation owners.
Whitney’s employer, Catherine Greene, asked the educated Whitney if he could devise a solution. He set aside his aspirations to practice law and began tinkering with plans for a hand-crank machine that would separate the sticky cotton from its seeds. Whitney successfully created such a machine in 1793, along with a larger version that could be powered by horses or water.
With the development of the cotton “gin” (short for engine), cotton rapidly surpassed tobacco, rice, and sugar as the number one southern crop. Cotton production increased 800% over the next ten years with assistance from Whitney’s invention. The cotton gin brought Southerners unprecedented prosperity.
With the ability to process cotton at a faster rate, southern plantation owners needed to increase their labor force. The already large slave system in the south became larger as slaves were smuggled into the country (slave importation had been deemed illegal from 1808 on). Slave women were encouraged, and in some cases enticed with promises of freedom, to have children and build up the slave owner’s labor force, all to increase the cotton harvest. Already prosperous southern plantation owners grew even wealthier with the bounties brought by Whitney’s cotton gin. Ironically, Whitney had hoped his invention would reduce the need for slave labor, but its effect was just the opposite.
This thriving cotton industry led to the rise of large-scale commercial agriculture. Not only did increased cotton milling result in an increased numbers of slaves, but planters also worked to augment their land ownership to make more money. Some land was taken from the Indians, who were being removed from the southeast during this period. Also, large plantation owners were buying out smaller plantations to increase their land holdings, and those planters who were bought out moved westward. The motto of Southerners became “Cotton is King,” and they were happy to serve a ruler who provided such prosperity.
Southerners were not the only ones benefiting from the cotton boom. Eighty percent of the south’s cotton went to England by way of northern shippers. These shippers were able to buy cotton wholesale and sell it at a premium, since England’s most important manufactured good was cotton cloth. One-fifth of the population in England earned a living from the manufacture of this cloth, and 75 percent of the cotton used in England’s production came from the United States. Since England was so dependent on the south’s cotton and the north’s transportation of it, both the north and the south were able to benefit heavily from this export.
The many people who gained wealth from cotton were willing to disregard the indications that a one-crop economy could not be sustained. Planters ignored the fact that King Cotton was hard on the soil, especially with the frenzied harvesting that was taking place during this era.
There were other drawbacks to the cotton industry, as well. The cotton gin made production potential greater, but it also made the labor source more unstable. The slaves required to operate the cotton gins could get sick or injured in great numbers, rendering plantation owners unable to harvest the crops growing on their land. The cotton-based economy also promoted a decidedly unequal