Introduction
“Cotton is woven into Memphis's history and culture.“ (The Cotton Museum of Memphis). In fact, cotton plantation slaves shouted chants that soon became the blues we all know and love today. Cotton is a plant fiber that is difficult growing, yet could make many fabrics and textiles. Also, thanks to Memphis and it’s cotton there were many more jobs in the city. Memphis was well known for the cotton they grew and traded. A plant called cotton made Memphis known and provided many jobs for it’s people.
What is Cotton
Cotton is a plant fiber that is complicated to grow, but provides many fabrics and textiles. For example, cotton can make jersey, velvet, and flannel. These are soon made into textiles such as shirts, jeans, pillows,
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“By the late 1840s, river boats loaded with cotton lined the riverbanks at Memphis and the cotton became a very important part of the economy of the city. ” (Memphis Historical Society). This explains one way the cotton was transported. Another way is to have trucks on the road importing and exporting Memphis’ cotton. “ The cotton industry generated numerous other activities in the area. - hotels, grocers, dry goods, mule trading - all in support of the Cotton Row brokers. “ ( Memphis Historical Society). That explains all the little shops of clothing for work at people there would first need to weave cotton cloth and so the cloth in the clothing for the cashiers and other sellers to sell. It also shows why there used to be hotels and stores along Cotton Row. “ The Memphis Cotton Exchange has been an important institution since 1873. ”( Memphis Historical Society). The Memphis Cotton Exchange was all-in-all a cotton auction. Auctions need many people to run them. First of all, an auction needs farmers to farm cotton so people can auction it off. Auctions also need an auctioneer to auction off all the cotton to the people. Of course, auctions are always going to need a place to have the auction, so owners of nearby shops or shelters might host the auction for the people. The people of Memphis had many jobs thanks to the cotton they grew and …show more content…
“By 1900, Memphis was the world's largest market for cotton.“ (David Kusha). More specifically, by 1898 Memphis was the leading resource in the U.S. People came from bordering states just to buy or sell the cotton at the Memphis Cotton Exchange. People also came to see the Memphis Cotton Carnival. “ It’s original purpose was to promote and celebrate the cotton industry. “ (Ennead) Which means that Memphis created a fair that would advertise the cotton and increase profits. It worked, many more people bought clothing from small clothing stores around Cotton Row. “Because of segregation, blacks could not participate. So Dr. Q.R. Venson founded what became the Cotton Makers Jubilee in 1935 for African-Americans.” (Steve Pike). This shows that African-Americans were not allowed to attend the Memphis Cotton Carnival, so they created their own. Around half a century later, the two carnivals combined to make the Memphis
Between 1800 and 1850, the North and South had grown distinctively different, but they also had some similarities. Some of the differences & similarities between the North and South included the economy, social attitudes & structures, and daily life. The North and the South had farmers and everyone including children worked on the family farms. As time went by, the North became more industrialized and manufacturing became the center point of their economy rather than agriculture. Factories popped up all along the east coast and the inland waterways.
The cotton gin help the slaves separated the cotton from the seeds. They had factories in the North and plantations in the south. The factories allowed for trading with forgeign countries. . A telegraph is how they communicated back then..
Between 1787 and 1808, 250,000 new slaves arrived in the U.S. because of the cotton boom (2). Plantation owners were involved in the slave trade which was the transporting and selling humans as slaves. When selling the slaves, prices varied depending on the person's skin color, sex, age and location (3). In 1834, a man named Joseph Ingraham wrote about the slave trade said that “to sell cotton in order to buy negroes—to make more cotton to buy more negroes, ‘ad infinitum,’ is the aim and direct tendency of all the operations of the thorough going cotton planter; his whole soul is wrapped up in the pursuit (3).” Families were separated because of the slave trade.
Between the 1820s and 1860s, a time period that was greatly influenced by the Industrial Revolution, people were willing to work hard so that they could provide for their families. Slaves were still being used to help develop the United States of America by harvest crops such as cotton, and please their “masters.” were forced to work and help develop the country. Both slavery and industry helped the country grow financially. Slaves had to work harder to meet higher cotton demands. The introduction of the cotton gin also aided in the aided in the rapid production of cotton (PIIP 9).
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.
Nat Turner Rebellion Stacey Cofield Florida State College at Jacksonville Nat Turner Rebellion The primary source that I have chosen is Nat Turner Explains His Rebellion, 1831. More than fifty white men, women and children were led to their untimely demised at the hands of Nat Turner. Leading a revolt that was comprised of Black men, some freed and others enslaved, Turner felt his actions were an act of God.
By the early 1800’s, the vastly growing cotton industry soared as cotton became the nation’s most important and valuable export. The development of the cotton gin only further propelled the cotton industry into economic success. The cotton gin took care of the hard tedious work that slaves used to have to undertake and increased the pace and the quantities in which cotton bales were produced. Working among the cotton fields, slaves adopted the gang system. The gang system was most commonly used in the cotton industry; to speed up production but also formally used among tobacco and sugar production.
No matter your stance at the time, one thing became clear: socially, politically and economically, slavery was the fabric of American success and gave birth to the Old South as we know it today. At the center of the entire institution of slavery, and central to its defense, was the economic domination it provided a young country in international markets. In the early 19th century, cotton was a popular commodity and overtook sugar as the main crop produced by slave labor. The production of cotton became the nation’s top priority; America supplied ¾ of the cotton supply to the entire world.
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.
They believed that an economy based on cotton and slavery would continue to prosper". This shows that Slaves and cotton were very important to the Southerners. In conclusion, slaves in the south were important people because they managed to do so much stuff with the least number of things. For example, they had their own cultures and they kept that religion going on even through the roughest times in their lives like being separated from their family, or even getting a whipping for no reason. These slaves went through so much and they are strong people who couldn't make history the way it is now and
The use of the cotton gin had a major impact on slavery by expanding the use and population of slaves. “This machine revolutionized the process of separating cotton from its seed, making it dramatically faster and less expensive to turn picked cotton into usable cotton for textiles” the author said. Harvesting the cotton fields was intense work and the more cotton that was being produced lead to more fields causing more slaves to be needed to work those fields. All the large cotton plantations that the south maintained, by 1850 the slave population increased tremendously. “Southern wealth had become reliant on this one crop and thus was completely dependent on slave-labor.”
That is why the invention of the “cotton gin” was very important for the South, as it helped them get out seeds faster than a slave could. Ten years after the invention of the “cotton gin”, cotton became the South’s most important
For example, small farmers depended on the local plantation aristocracy for access to cotton gins, markets for their modest crops and their livestock, and credit or other financial assistance in time of need. The great cotton economy allowed many small farmers to improve their economic fortunes. Some bought more land, some became slave owners, and some moved into the fringes of plantation society. A typical white southerner was a yeoman farmer, who was also known as “plain folk.” These farmers owned a few slaves, with whom they worked and lived more closely than the larger planters.
With the rise in the production of cotton, the south needed more slaves in order to control and to work the cotton production. This invention increased the demand for slave labor. The invention of The Cotton Gin led to a prosperity in the Southern economy creating a one-crop economy for the South. There was a pressure put on the relationship between the North and the South and their different perceptions of slavery
“Necessity is the mother of all invention.” Cotton labor conducted by slaves was arduous and took long periods of time. A necessity for a faster way to separate the cotton seeds from the fiber evolved because it would take slaves laborious hours to created small amounts of cotton. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and patented it a year later which mechanized the cotton process. This had the benefit of lowering the price of cotton production and removing slaves from that part of the process.