Lauren Buccambuso

1740 Economics
12/7/2014

Cotton

Its hard to imagine that cotton wasnt always the go to commodity that is it today.
My jeans, my bedding, my t-shirt my couch, without cotton things in my daily life would
be a lot different/. More than just its current uses, cotton has played a large role in
shaping the US in helping us strengthen international trade, and is the source of our
uglier truths: slavery.
Cotton was seen as a specialty crop by the US, not as a very useful one. Prior to the
late 1700s cotton was not beneficial to harvest as it would take months for slaves to
prepare a small section of cotton to the
point of use and would cost more in time
and labor than what it was worth. When
Eli Whitney unveiled his invention
of the Cotton Gin in 1973, our countrys
views of the crop changed drastically.
Whitneys cotton gin eliminated the

Illustration of Eli Whitneys Cotton Gin

months of wasted time that farmers were experiencing processing the cotton plants by
hand. The invention would separate the cotton from the seed and enabled farmers to
process the harvested crop in no time at all.
According to the article, Why Was Cotton King, by Henry Louis Gates, Cotton
was the leading American Export from 1803-1937. In the rapid growth in the US during
the 1830s and 1850s, the US was using more resources than it was producing, but
cotton was our number one export. This was important as this export alone paid for
over half of the materials that the country was needing to purchase abroad. Imports
from the southern states cotton farms was what the British relied on for 75-80% of its
raw materials impacting their labor force driving need for workers in their textile
manufacturing plants. Not only were we growing and paying off our debt, but cotton
helped boost our trading partnerships with other large powers such as Britain and the
rest of Europe.
Cotton was a hot commodity and ruled as king in the US, but the ways that our
country produced such massive quantities of the crop relied on the use of slave labor.
Although Whitneys cotton gin took the manual process out of separating the cotton
from the seeds, harvesting the cotton still needed manpower.
Slaves were not considered people- they were valuable property. In this
mentality, they were treated no differently than livestock. Living conditions were
physically horrible and described by the book as inhuman. The family unit held no
merit and slaves were frequently sold off and separated to turn a profit. This trade

became a specialized market and pushed slavery into common practice in other
regions. The book quotes a passage from Frederick Douglass:
My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant It is a common customto
part children from their mothers at an early age. Frequently before the child reached its
12 month, its mother ws taken from it and hired out on some farm the child is placed
under the care of an old woman, too old for field work
Between 1790 and 1860, slave population was growing at a slightly faster rate
than whites in the south. According to our book, the slave population was being bred
faster due to their value. In 1860, the value of slaves in America was roughly three
times greater than the total amount invested in banks, equal to about seven times the
value of all circulating currency in the
US at the time and 12 times the
amount of the entire US cotton crop
(Gates). It wasnt just the Southern
states that relied on slave labor, the
British relied on it as noted above,
but northern states depended on the
raw material to fund their spindles in
operation. New England had 52% of the manufacturing establishments and 75% of the
5.14 million spindles in operation. These mills in New England used 283.7 million
pounds of cotton of the 422.6 million pounds used by the US in 1860. Even though it
was the south that was forcing slave labor, northern states, and the governments
reliance upon it for international trade, enabled the practice.

The ethical dilemma that faced the country regarding the issue of slavery came
to a head, resulting in the civil war. The war was split between the Northern Free
states and the slavery ran southern states. Even though the south had the bartering
power of cotton to fund supplies such as guns and ammo, the northern states were able
to block those trade routes and ultimately win the war- abolishing slavery in the country.
Cotton did not lose its importance after the war. The victorious northern states
did not take away the plantations of land owners in the south and a rebuilding happened
in our country. Everyone on both sides understood the importance of rebuilding the
cotton industry had on our economy. We needed the cotton exports to continue to
develop our country, keep growing, develop industrially and continue building railroads.
America regained its sought-after position as the worlds leading producer of
cotton. By 1870, sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American
south had produced more cotton than they had in 1860, and by 1880, they exported
more cotton than they had in 1860. For 134 years, from 1803 to 1937, America was the
worlds leading cotton exporter (Dattel).
Today, cotton is still an important part of our economy. The documentary
Cotton by A&Es Modern Marvels shows how technology owns the industry. We have
developed machines to harvest the cotton from the fields, machines to clean out leaves
and debris from the product and even still, the Cotton Gin, though updated since the
1800s, is still used to finish the process.