12.1 The Economics of Cotton

In the antebellum era (the years before the Civil War), American planters in the South continued to grow Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice as they had in the colonial era.

• However, cotton emerged as the antebellum South’s major commercial crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance.

  • By 1860, the region was producing 2/3 of the world’s cotton.

  • Southern cotton helped fuel the 19th century Industrial Revolution in both the U.S. and Great Britain.

The cotton gin

• Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793.

• A device that separated the seeds from raw cotton.

• Revolutionized the production of cotton.

King Cotton

• Following the War of 1812, a huge increase in production resulted in the “cotton boom.”

  • By midcentury, cotton became the key cash crop of the southern economy and the most important American commodity.

  • By 1860, enslaved labor was producing over two billion pounds of cotton per year.

  • By the time of the Civil War, South Carolina politician James Hammond confidently proclaimed that the North could never threaten the South because “cotton is king.”

• The cotton grown in the South was known as “Petit Gulf cotton,” a mix of Mexican, Georgia, and Siamese strains.

  • Grew extremely well in different soils and climates.

  • Dominated cotton production in the Mississippi River Valley and Texas.

    • Home of the new slave states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri.

The conditions of labor of enslaved people were terrible.

• White slaveholders sent armies of the enslaved to clear the land in order to grow and pick the cotton.

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe used the phrase “to be sold down the river,” to illustrate this forced migration from the upper southern states to the Deep South to grow cotton.

• The Jeffersonian vision of the settlement of new U.S. territories entailed White yeoman farmers single-handedly carving out small independent farms.

  • However, the reality proves quite different as enslaved people labored to strip the vegetation to make way for cotton in this new land.

    • Enslaved people composed the vanguard of this American expansion to the West.

• Weeding the cotton rows took significant time and energy.

• When the cotton plants flowered and gave way to cotton bolls, all the plantation’s enslaved men, women, and children worked together to pick the crop.

  • The effort was laborious, and a White “driver” employed the lash to make the enslaved people work as quickly as possible.

• Enslaved people worked from sunrise to sunset with a 10-minute break at lunch.

The Mississippi River 

• As the cotton industry boomed in the South, the Mississippi River quickly became the essential water highway in the United States.

  • Steamboats played a crucial role in the transportation revolution thanks to their enormous freight-carrying capacity and ability to navigate shallow waterways.

    • Became a defining component of the cotton kingdom.

    • Illustrated the class and social distinctions of the antebellum age.

      • While the deck carried precious cargo, ornate rooms graces the interior.

      • White people socialized in the ship’s saloons and dining halls while enslaved Black people served them.

• New Orleans rose in prominence as a result of the cotton boom due to its strategic position near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

  • By 1840, New Orleans alone had 12 percent of the nation’s total banking capital, and visitors often commented on the great cultural diversity of the city.

The Domestic Slave Trade

• Despite the rhetoric of the Revolution that “all men are created equal,” slavery not only endured in the American republic but formed the very foundation of the country’s economic success.

• In 1807, the U.S. Congress abolished the foreign slave trade, a ban that went into effect the beginning of the following year.

  • Smuggling continued to occur, and the end of international slave trade meant that enslaved domestic people were in very high demand.

• A fall in the price of tobacco had caused the landowners in the Upper South to reduce their production of this crop and use more of their land to grow wheat.

  • Since growing wheat was less laborious than growing tobacco, former farmers in the older states of Virginia and Maryland found themselves with “surplus” enslaved people.

    • They were obligated to feed, clothe, and shelter this people. Thus, some slaveholders responded to this situation by releasing enslaved people or selling them.

      • Therefore, Virginia and Maryland took the lead in the domestic slave trade.

        • The trading of enslaved people within the borders of the U.S.

• Offered many economic opportunities for White men.

  • Those who sold the enslaved could realize great profits.

  • Slave brokers who served as middlemen could also get paid handsomely.

  • Other White men could benefit from the trade as owners of warehouses and pens in which the enslaved were held.

  • Suppliers of food and clothing for enslaved people on the move.

• Virginia sold more than half a million people to people living in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina.

• New Orleans boasted the largest slave market in the U.S. and grew to become the nation’s fourth-largest city as a result.

• By 1860, the total number of African Americans increased to 4.4 million, and of that number, 3.95 million were held in bondage.

  • For many of the enslaved, it incited terror of being sold away from family and friends.

Solomon Northup

• A free Black man living in Saratoga, New York, when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.

• He later escaped and wrote a book about his experiences:

  • Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853