As the antebellum Americans made several advancements in technological innovations, this helped the North overcome the South agriculturally. With the new inventions such as the cotton gin, the reaper, the steel tipped plow, and new ways to revive unfertile soil, the North had many advantages to aid them while they were gone to war. As these new inventions were created each had an impact on how and why the differences between the North and South came to be. Although the creation of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney improved the South’s economy it also made the South more dependent on slaves. With this new invention, a person could yield eight times as much cotton in one day versus the traditional method. It also made the Southern people more dependent on slavery than ever before. As more cotton could be produced in one day the need for slaves grew higher. No longer could the South due …show more content…
While others were in search for new land as their original soils were overworked and no longer fertile, farmers in the east started new ways to fertilize the soil and produce better crops. Some used plaster from canal construction which lead to an increase of the average crop which produced six bundles of wheat per acre to fifteen bundles per acre. Others increased dairy by feeding their cows the best clover and bluegrass. Now the butter could be sold at double the price than it was before. As all these advancements and developments increased the economy in the North, the South’s advancements only made it more dependent upon slavery. As the South had the slaves in which they did not have labor costs, the South felt that they did not need these new improvements. Which in the end, the North won the Civil War. But as these new inventions along with other inventions such as steam engines, sewing machines, and the telegraph, the North and South’s lives were going to change forever, but that is another
The Cotton Gin, never was there an artifact that brought so much prosperity as well as hardship in equal measure. Eli Whitney’s invention which was created in 1793 is often cited by historians as an indirect cause of the American Civil War. The genius of the cotton gin was that it could separate the seed from the cotton, so rather than having armies of slaves picking cotton from sun up to sun down this machine could do the job in half the time. Consider this, now even a small plantation operation could quadruple its bottom line, this caused an even greater boom in the acquisition of slaves. Francis Ellen Watkins stated, “A hundred thousand new-born babes are annually added to the victims of slavery; twenty thousand lives are annually sacrificed
Southern Slaves and Northern Laborers had many different experiences, even though they were both considered workers. Their compensation, working hours, working conditions, and consequences for breaking rules varied. In the end, the life of a Southern Slave was, mainly, harder than the life of a Northern Laborer. First off, Southern Slaves probably had better compensation than Northern Laborers. Although Northern Laborers were given wages by the factory owners for their work, they ultimately had to pay back the factory owners for their provisions.
During the Antebellum period, the economy in the South and the North changed drastically. Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin and the demand for slavery reached an all time high. Meanwhile, the North had begun to industrialize and stray away from slavery. This caused these two regions to have different views on slavery. The North started to be against slavery and the South continued to support it.
Edwards voices the drastic growth in production and new inventions in the North, but points out the South’s struggle with keeping up with the drastic growth. It is clear Edwards wanted reader to fully understand that the South was struggling greatly after the war and because of it the North led the Industrial Revolution. Edwards focuses around the following question: What does the South do to reestablish itself and become economically stable again after facing an overwhelming loss agriculturally? Edwards use of evidence to back up her argument of the South’s struggles after the war and the lack of reconstruction make it a reliable statement. Her evidence includes groups such as Ku Klux Klan and the Republican corruption to be main evidence to why the South was behind the rest of the nation.
During the 18th century there was many technology advances some that changed society in a positive manner and some that influenced negatively. In 1800 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, this invention helped the industry in a positive way. The cotton gin was able to remove the seeds from cotton in a more timely manner. In the United States the removal of the seeds from cotton was done by slaves,with the ability to remove the seeds faster it helped to put an end to slavery.
With Ely Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, cotton farming drove several changes. Cotton farmers could grow more cotton, considering processing cotton became more efficient with the cotton gin (Schultz, 2013). This change drove increases in land use, the establishment of additional farms, and a sharp increase in the use of enslaved people. These additional farms increased the wealth of southern farmers but caused several environmental problems considering the additional land clearing required to open fields and the soil damage caused by overuse. Social life for enslaved people dropped to inhumane levels, given that enslavers believed social interaction among enslaved people could lead to rebellion and insurrection due to several slave
The Cotton Gin invented by Eli Whitney was a machine that was able to quickly separate cotton fibers from the seeds, this made work faster and more productive. Although this invention affected the South in many helpful ways the biggest effect of the Cotton Gin was the civil war. The Cotton Gin was a big demand in the South because cotton and agriculture were what the economy relied on. The invention needed people to work the cotton gin therefore, the South needed an abundance of slaves. The population of enslaved people was far larger in the South than in the North as seen in this map showing the distribution of the population of enslaved people in the United States, in 1861 shown on the map below (Map of Enslaved 1861).
The impact of slavery on the Old South is a difficult measure to establish because slavery was the Old South. While the popular adage was “Cotton is King,” it was simply a microcosm of the delusion of the day. Truly, slavery was king. Slavery was the growing tension of the time, political catalyst and ironically crux of American power. To the masses, slavery was a social defining stance; the “peculiar institution” to some and a defining moral line to others, American life was changed depending on what view you took of slavery.
Notably, economic causes were major predicaments during the American civil war. These were the grounds of the civil war that affected the two regions in many ways. Within time, economic variations developed vastly between the two parts of the two regions. The Southern states depended much on farming than in industrialization. After the invention of the Cotton Gin, there as a greater necessity for persons and property, thus this made cotton the chief year’s produce of the South.
It turned the rag to riches. It was perfect for people that wanted to change their past and to have a new start. South tobacco farm owners became the most wealthy and self sufficient from the government. The south had popular trading ports that
It revolutionized the cotton industry by making it more profitable. A machine was now used to remove seeds from cotton rather than having to remove them by hand. This allowed more cotton to be processed quicker which made production of cotton more efficient for farmers. Prior to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was actually dying out in the southern United States due to how labor intensive the removal of seeds from cotton had become.
The growth of the textile industry, in particular, generated an increased need for cotton, which in turn perpetuated the south's reliance on slavery. With the creation of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, cotton could be produced much more efficiently and effectively through slave labor, and was also more accessible to small farms as well. The social gap between the rich and the poor in the South did not widen as much as in the North, because white people, regardless of whether they were independent landed farmers, landless farmers and farm workers, or plantation owners, had a "bond" of racial solidarity that was strongly emphasized in southern society, which solidified and aided in the retention of slavery as an institution. Although most southerners did not own slaves, and those who did rarely owned more than 10, every white southerner benefitted from slavery because it meant they could never be at the bottom of the social or economic hierarchy, and also, slaveholders often rented out slave labor to other farmers during harvest season. Even though slavery was becoming more of a divisive issue, the border states (Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland) that could have ousted the slave-cotton system based on public opinion chose to remain slave states.
One way it helped the farmers was the invention of many new big machinery. Right after the civil war, there wasn’t a need for slave labor. Instead there was machinery made, that was
The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, reduced the time it took to separate seeds from cotton. Along with the cotton gin came the need for a large amount of cheap labor. The southern economy grew to depend on cotton and therefore slavery. The northern economy, on the other hand, was based on industry. They bought raw cotton from
Approximately three Southern states change their approach on forced labor without compensation, African American slaves would work for an amount of cash that was, generally, given to the masters of the slaves; However, some of these African American were freed and, therefore, kept all the earnings. In the mid 1800’s southern states, slavery was progressively headed towards salary base employment which would boost the states economically. Furthermore, Northern states were already using such economic structure to boost labor in the industrial region, which led to divide the country into sectors of specialized commodities. Southern state were no longer the only major contributor of economic growth, the Northern states were in large in foreign demands for cotton in the years of 1815-1843 as industries boomed in