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"Handheld roller gins had been used in India and then other countries since at earliest 500 CE.[3] The Indian worm-gear roller gin, invented some time around the sixteenth century,[4] has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time. A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. Whitney's gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War.[5] Modern automated cotton gins use multiple powered cleaning cylinders and saws, and offer far higher productivity than their hand-powered forebears.[6]
"Eli Whitney invented his cotton gin in 1793. He began to work on this project after moving to Georgia in search of work. Given that farmers were desperately searching for a way to make cotton farming profitable, a woman named Catharine Greene provided Whitney with funding to create the first cotton gin. Whitney created two cotton gins: a small one that could be hand cranked and a large one that could be driven by a horse or water power. Thanks to the cotton gin, the amount of raw cotton yielded doubled each decade after 1800. ...
"Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds.[18] With Eli Whitney’s gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South. Cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; and Galveston, Texas became major shipping ports, deriving substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South. Additionally, the greatly expanded supply of cotton created strong demand for textile machinery and improved machine designs that replaced wooden parts with metal. This led to the invention of many machine tools in the early 19th century.[2]
"The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy.[19] While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[20] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.[21] By 1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market.[22] The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse, and – according to many historians – was the start of the Industrial Revolution".[23]"
(My emphasis - more @ the URL)
A lot of history & blood & sweat & tears, all in one little device.
I realize that for the South cotton and slave labor ended up being the backbone of their economy, hence a huge issue with even the thought of freeing slaves, but what if the USA had offered the south huge investments in machines, manufacturing, etc. basically even if they couldn't convince the south the abandon slavery for moral reasons make it so the south could at least view it more economically beneficial to abandon slavery in turn for things that could make their lives and economy even better? Offer a huge incentive by industrialisation.
In addition to what others have said, the South did not even give Abraham Lincoln a chance to get into office and negotiate long term solutions.
Lincoln won the election in November 1860 but in December South Carolina seceded from the Union. They were followed by 6 other states in the deep South in January and Feb 1861 (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas ). This was BEFORE Lincoln took office in March 1861.
I realize that for the South cotton and slave labor ended up being the backbone of their economy, hence a huge issue with even the thought of freeing slaves, but what if the USA had offered the south huge investments in machines, manufacturing, etc. basically even if they couldn't convince the south the abandon slavery for moral reasons make it so the south could at least view it more economically beneficial to abandon slavery in turn for things that could make their lives and economy even better? Offer a huge incentive by industrialisation.
I think there's a fallacy here. Industry developed naturally, not due to government incentives. Southerners were making money hand over fist in cotton. There wasn't a reason to abandon it.
I think there's a fallacy here. Industry developed naturally, not due to government incentives. Southerners were making money hand over fist in cotton. There wasn't a reason to abandon it.
Plantation society was making money. That is, the people who owned the big plantations, & maybe the people who loaned them money/credit or invested in their crop, were making money. From a structural point of view, the slaveholding South was never going to change - & that seemed to be the intent.
The big plantations would own most of the slaves, & grow the most cotton, & get most of the money in payment, & most of the credit for the next crop. It looked like a sweet deal, except that the cotton economy had to keep growing, there had to be new lands to expand to as old lands were exhausted.
In time, the big plantations raced to mortgage their assets - mostly the slaves themselves. As long as the cotton market kept expanding, they could cover their costs, pay off their loans, & make a profit. When they couldn't, they walked away from their debt, & the slave & credit markets crashed for a while. That's when the slaveholding South lost control of their finances, & the Western credit & bankers became leery of investing in cotton.
I realize that for the South cotton and slave labor ended up being the backbone of their economy, hence a huge issue with even the thought of freeing slaves, but what if the USA had offered the south huge investments in machines, manufacturing, etc. basically even if they couldn't convince the south the abandon slavery for moral reasons make it so the south could at least view it more economically beneficial to abandon slavery in turn for things that could make their lives and economy even better? Offer a huge incentive by industrialization.
The OP seems to be laboring under the illusion that "economic policy" was as strong an influence in ante-bellum times as is the case in the present day; this simply was not so. The plantation economy of the agrarian South depended primarily upon the production of cotton. Great Britain had a large demand for cotton, but had alternative suppliers in the British sphere of influence, most notably India and Egypt. Britain also produced the greatest share of the manufactured goods which the rest of the world sought, and produced them more efficiently than the developing American industrial sector, so that the interests of both the Southern planters and the British industrialists lay in opposition to those of the developing American North.
But as many of us have noted, it's become the fashion among the Left-leaning academic Establishment to attribute the Civil War and its consequences to slavery, and slavery alone -- despite the fact that it still existed in other less-developed parts of the world (Brazil, also an exporter of basic agricultural goods -- coffee and sugar, for example). To make the leap from the conventions of the times of primitive predominately-agrarian societies to policies intended for fully-developed economies (and at a time of far more education and understanding of economics) simply isn't realistic.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-20-2017 at 03:25 AM..
I realize that for the South cotton and slave labor ended up being the backbone of their economy, hence a huge issue with even the thought of freeing slaves, but what if the USA had offered the south huge investments in machines, manufacturing, etc. basically even if they couldn't convince the south the abandon slavery for moral reasons make it so the south could at least view it more economically beneficial to abandon slavery in turn for things that could make their lives and economy even better? Offer a huge incentive by industrialisation.
This doesn't make any sense,
Slavery thrived in the South because of "King cotton"
It's like saying that Saudi Arabia depends too much on oil and you want to offer them investments to get them to move away from the oil industry.
The OP seems to be laboring under the illusion that "economic policy" was as strong an influence in ante-bellum times as is the case in the present day; this simply was not so. The plantation economy of the agrarian South depended primarily upon the production of cotton. Great Britain had a large demand for cotton, but had alternative suppliers in the British sphere of influence, most notably India and Egypt. Britain also produced the greatest share of the manufactured goods which the rest of the world sought, and produced them more efficiently than the developing American industrial sector, so that the interests of both the Southern planters and the British industrialists lay in opposition to those of the developing American North.
"Prior to the Civil War, Lancashire companies issued surveys to find new cotton-growing countries if the Civil War were to occur and reduce American exports. India was deemed to be the country capable of growing the necessary amounts. Indeed, it helped fill the gap during the war, making up only 31% of British cotton imports in 1861, but 90% in 1862 and 67% in 1864.[44]
"Additionally, the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France, began to turn to Egyptian cotton. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports,[citation needed] sending Egypt into a deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882."
(My emphasis - more @ the URL)
Yah, UK had other sources for cotton, but apparently they preferred to deal with the US - I don't know why, I haven't looked into that. Family ties? Common language? Certainly Plantation Society in the South saw itself as drawn from & representative of the best of the European chevaliers - although there's considerable doubt as to the accuracy about the descendant part. Possibly it was just the length of time that the Southern cotton factors had been dealing with their UK counterparts.
& note that as soon as Southern US cotton production rebounded, UK & France dropped the cotton they had been buying from Egypt. India also had problems in their cotton production, in trying to expand the crop - I think it was geography & water supply. In any event, there was a limit to how much more cotton could be produced, that was acceptable in quality.
This doesn't make any sense, Slavery thrived in the South because of "King cotton"
It's like saying that Saudi Arabia depends too much on oil and you want to offer them investments to get them to move away from the oil industry.
Yes & No. The antebellum US South thrived because they were cheap & efficient producers of quality cotton in bulk. Partially it was steam equipment (presumably the cotton gin & baling equipment), suitable land & water, & slave labor. It didn't have to be slave labor, but that's what the majority of the cotton labor force in the South became.
Yah, Saudi does depend too much on oil - but assuming they've banked profits & have savings commensurate with that income flow - they can afford to invest to diversity their economy. They have been doing that, in fact - but I'm not sure the ROI has been very good. That's a different topic in any event.
I guess a better example would have been with cattle
Because that's exactly how they saw their slaves
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South Carolina never gave Lincoln a chance.
