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Cotton Gin Research Paper

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The Cotton Gin

In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine called a cotton gin. The cotton gin became very popular in the South. This machine made the South able to produce very large amounts of cotton, which made them lots of money. The only issue was that the cotton still needed to be picked by hand, so slavery soon became popular in the South.

Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825. When he was young he used to love taking things apart in his fathers workshop, like clocks, and putting them back together again. Then, when he was in his twenties, he worked at a plantation tutoring children. He noticed how the slaves were having much trouble picking the seeds out of raw cotton. So, when he had …show more content…

You put cotton in the top and then crank the lever. The cotton gets pulled through wire teeth, which acted like a comb, and pushed the seeds out of the cotton. Then, the cotton gets pulled out of those wire teeth by brushes on the other side of the teeth, and then pulled off of the brushes by hand.

This cotton gin allowed farmers to plant larger amounts of cotton. Before the cotton gin, cotton was not a cash crop but was used for clothing and other things like blankets or pillows. Tobacco and indigo were the leading cash crops in the South at that time. Tobacco messed up the land and after it's planted the land needs 7 years of rest before anything can be planted again. Cotton could be planted anywhere, even in soil that was drained of its nutrients.

Now that cotton is easier to clean, and it grows fast, cotton soon became the leading cash crop in the South. There were a few problems with this, though. The farmers needed more land to grow cotton, so they took it from the Indians. They also needed workers to harvest the cotton, so they used slaves for this

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