Cotton Gin Thesis

i. Introduction

"I never thought my cotton gin would change history."- Eli Whitney. In 1794, born the inventor Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, a machine used for separating cotton from its seeds making it faster and less expensive to turn the picked cotton into usable cotton for textiles. However, many experts trace the deaths of more than 600000 u.s citizens on Civil War battlefields to this economic cause. By 1850, the tool had changed the face of southern agriculture because of the weather conditions needed for the plant to grow. Faster processing of cotton with the gin meant large cotton plantation across the south for the landowners to establish bigger farms that meant the need of more slaves. Southren wealth had become reliant on this crop and completely dependent on slave labor. The cotton gin evokes to no images of fine machinery but rather scenes of duped slaves and battlefield deads.

ii. How cotton gin suspension started the civil war.

The growth of cotton production affected the world, the Northern part of the US brought more cotton and built more for textiles.

England demanded much more cotton and built more textile mills also, these two were which the south sold their cotton to. Meanwhile, The South was not able to build textile mills because their capital was tied up in their slaves in order to produce more cotton. The South did not have the ability to build up good transportation system such as railroads, canals etc.. but they experiment once using slave labor for manufacturing, it was unsatisfied as usual slaves were victimized and lost lives.

During the Civil war, the South had many disadvantages over the North. A large portion of their population were uneducated slaves. They had no factories to produce goods and to become self sufficient when they separated from the North. Because the South had not built up a good transportation system, they were not able to move men and supplies easily across the country, as the North was able to

do.
As both the North and the South actuatefor war, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the "free market" and the "slave labor" economic systems became increasingly clear in their ability to support a war economy. The Union's economic capacity increased during the war as the North continued its rapid industrialization to abolish the nonconformity. In the South, a smaller industrial base, fewer rail lines, and an agricultural economy based upon slave labor made the accumalition of resources more difficult. As the war dragged on, the Union's advantages in factories, railroads, and manpower put the Confederacy at a great disadvantage

iii. Conclusion
Cotton production in the South had increased. In a result, The number of slaves in the United states and the dependency on slaves had also increased. Captial had been invested in slaves but not in factories or transportation, all this happened because of a very simple machine, the cotton gin. Whitney who died in 1825 could not have foreseen how which his invention would change the world for the worse. The most important of these was the growth of slavery. While it's true that the cotton gin reduced removing seeds and increased wealth in the south but, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact the opposite had occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor.