The rise of cotton in the late 18th century was an important time for the economy. The production of cotton was concentrated primarily in the Southern part of the United States due to the climate and growing conditions. The agricultural South was completely dependent on the production of cotton. As the late 18th century cash crops such as rice, indigo, and tobacco became less beneficial. Eli Whitney, a graduate from Yale University, and looking to pay off college debt invented a machine that changed history. The cotton gin is known as the “cotton gin.” This machine led the way to an economic uproar. Plantation owners saw Whitney’s invention as a way to make money fast. Cotton became exceptionally profitable and was a major success in the Antebellum …show more content…
The leading starting point to the abolitionist movement was the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1833. The goal was to cause immediate abolition of slavery in the United States. The leader and spokesperson was radical William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most important abolitionists in 19th century America. Garrisons’ first act of abolitionist awareness was the publishing of a newspaper called The Liberator. This paper outraged the South, many fearing that he was trying to encourage a slave revolt. Due to his radical views and powerful use of words toward antislavery, he became a wanted man in many slave states. His radical views and strong disapproval of the US Constitution caused a divide from many abolitionists and a split form the movement. His radical actions and views set a separation between he and Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and ex-slave. Their views of the Constitution were opposite. Garrison viewed the Constitution as pro slavery, while Douglass viewed it as the “most important tool in ending the institution of slavery.” In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves exclusively in the areas of the rebellion. Although it did not end slavery permanently, it was a step in the right
Before the American civil war, the Southerner’s economy had almost entirely been constructed on slave and cash crop agriculture. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The cotton gin was a contraption that transmogrified the fabrication of cotton by significantly making the task of removing seeds from the cotton fiber faster. The invention benefitted the slaves because it saved the slaves
The abolitionist movement reached its peak between 1830 and 1860. During this period, abolitionists, those who "insisted slavery undermined the freedom, righteousness, order, and prosperity of all society" (McInerney, 8) sought to identify, denounce and abolish this cruel institution using their rights of free speech and free press. With free press and free speech "abolitionists depicted slavery as raw, aggressive power carrying in it's wake the seeds of political, social, economic, and moral dislocation" (McInerney, 18). In other words, the evils of slavery were expressed by abolitionists in an attempt to convince American society that slavery was not only morally wrong, but it also went against the goal of the republic, which was liberty and equality for all. Two prominent abolitionists during this period who utilized the right of free press were William Lloyd Garrison with the Liberator and Frederick Douglass with the North Star. When examining Garrison and Douglass it is apparent that they had different approaches to writing against slavery because of their separate background. However, these differences can also be attributed to the fact that their writing audiences, inspirations and motivations for publishing their respective papers were distinct. Garrison and Douglass also had different but very influential effects on the Abolitionist Movement. These do not make Garrison and Douglass opponents; instead they demonstrate how white and black abolitionists had different approaches, methods, and styles of conveying their common message of abolishing slavery.
As the Indians used slash and burn to make room for crops when the Americans came to Alabama they learned this type of agriculture and started growing cotton. This led to several events that dramatically affected Alabama's early agricultural development. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain created a greedy appetite for cotton fiber, and in 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new type of cotton gin in the United States, which lowered the cost of processing fiber. “By the time Alabama became a state in 1819, the interior of the state was easily accessed via the Tombigbee, Warrior, Alabama, and Chattahoochee rivers. Crops could also be transported to European and New England markets via the ports of Mobile and Apalachicola, Florida. Settlers poured into the new state with one objective to grow cotton. As time passed there was almost four million acres of cotton growing in Alabama” (Mitchell, 2007). As time progressed people thought of a new type of agriculture.
Abolitionism was around before the 1830’s but, it became a more radical during this time. Before 1830, Benjamin Lundy ran a anti-slavery newspaper. In 1829, Lundy hired William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison went on to publish his own newspaper the Liberator.
Geographically, North and South were very different places. The pastures of New England were similar to those found in England, suitable for a variety of uses. Hot Southern prairie lands were perfect for cotton growing, a lucrative business at this time. Following the invention of Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin, the South became increasingly dependent on this crop, and an entire society grew out of it. The society was one of wealthy planters, who led a life similar to the landed gentry of England, controlling politics and society of the day. In the fields laboured Negro slaves, usually only a handful per plantation, though larger farms were occasionally seen. In addition, there lived poor whites, tenant farmers or smallholders, who eked out a living from the land. This contrasted sharply with Northern society, where industrialisation flourished, creating wealthy entrepreneurs and employing cheap immigrant labour. Given the localised nature of media, and difficulties of transport two cultures grew up in the same nation, remarkably different and often suspicious of one another.
Abolitionism quickly gained popularity since 1821 when William Lloyd Garrison assisted in writing an anti-slavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, with Benjamin Lundy. In 1831, abolitionism continued to grow in popularity when William Lloyd Garrison started The Liberator. Although there remained not a need for slaves in the North, slavery remained very big in the South for growing “cash crops.” The majority of the abolitionists who inhabited the North organized speeches, meetings, and newspapers to spread their cause. Initially, only small revolts and fights occurred.
... the abolitionist movement is fueled by reading The Liberator, a newspaper that stirs his soul in fighting for the anti-slavery cause. While attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket on August 11, 1841, Douglass, with encouragement from Mr. William C. Coffin, speaks for the first time to a white audience about slavery.
But in the early 19th century, colonizationists created a new movement. Their idea was to ship all former slaves back to Africa, and the American Colonization Society became popular and wealthy enough to establish Liberia as an independent homeland for former slaves. While the idea was impractical and racist, it appealed to politicians like Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and even some freed slaves who figured that America's racism would never allow them to be treated as equals, did choose to emigrate to Liberia. However, most free blacks opposed the idea. In fact, in 1817, 3,000 of them assembled in Philadelphia and declared that black people were entitled to the same freedom as whites. By 1830, advocates for the end of slavery became more and more radical, like William Lloyd Garrison, whose magazine The Liberator was first published in 1831. Known for being "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice," Radical abolitionism became a movement largely because it used the same mix of pamphleteering and charismatic speechifying that people saw in the preachers of the Second Great Awakening, which, in turn, brought religion and abolition together in the North, preaching a simple message: Slavery was a sin. By 1843, 100,000 northerners were aligned with the American Anti-Slavery Society. What made the abolitionists so radical was their inclusive vision of
The reason why slavery spread into the cotton kingdom after revolution is because the tobacco income plummeted as white setters from Virginia and Carolinas forcing the original Native Americans inhabitants farther and farther west where they established plantations. The wide spread use of the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, made these cotton plantations more efficient and profitable. Around 1820, slavery was concentrated in tobacco growing areas of Virginia, Kentucky along coastal region of South Carolina and Northern Georgia and in 1860s it spread deep in the South (Alabama, Texas, Louisiana) following the spread of cotton.
Garrison was a radical abolitionist who had organized the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and founded The Liberator, a northern anti-slavery newspaper. Both Garrison and the Grimké sisters supported the immediate emancipation and integration of African Americans, and strongly rejected the beliefs of conservative northern abolitionists who favored colonization and gradualism. In September of 1835, Angelina composed a letter to Garrison “declaring her support of his radical stance against slavery.” In the letter, Angelina revealed her private concerns regarding the pro-slavery and anti-abolitionists riots that were taking place throughout the country. She mused that “[a]lthough I expected opposition, I was not prepared for it so soon—and I greatly feared [the] abolitionists would be driven back…and thrown into confusion.” Angelina concluded her letter with an ardent plea to Garrison to stand firm in his convictions. She entreated, “[t]he ground upon which you stand is holy ground: never…surrender it. If you surrender it, the hope of the slave is extinguished.” Garrison was deeply moved by the contents of Angelina’s letter; additionally, he recognized the value and honesty of Angelina’s words and shrewdly discerned that they should be read and admired by a national audience. Consequently, Garrison published
Arendt, Hannah. “What Is Freedom?” Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Group, 2012. 142-69. Print.
William Lloyd Garrison was one of the most radical social reformers during his time, and was the publisher of The Liberator which a newspaper that highlighted the Abolitionists’ Movement’s cause. He advocated the immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves although it was an unpopular view amongst people, even to those residing in the North who were against slavery.Garrison managed to remain passive, the amount of violence from those who did not agree with him. He obtained numerous death threats, and the State of Georgia’s government even offered a reward of $5,000 for his arrest. Despite of this, he continued in getting his views across, and burned a copy of the Constitution on J...
“Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd 1862. The document states that if the states in the rebellion didn’t cease, the proclamation would go into effect” (10 Facts). When the rebellious states decided not to, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation on January 1st, 1863. The proclamation only applied to the states in rebellion. In fact, the proclamation declared, “that all persons held as slaves, within the rebellious, are and henceforth shall be freed” (The Emancipation Proclamation). During the war, the Southern states used the slaves to support their armies in the field and to manage the home front. Lincoln justified the proclamation as a war measure intended to cripple the Confederates use of slaves in war. The book, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End Of Slavery in America, says “No single official paper in American history changed the lives of as many Americans as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But no American document has been held up to greater suspicion” (Guelzo 12).
By 1790 slavery was on the decline in America. Apart from tobacco, rice, and a special strain of cotton that could be grown only in very few places, the South really had no money crop to export. Tobacco was a land waster, depleting the soil within very few years. Land was so cheap that tobacco planters never bothered to reclaim the soil by crop rotation -- they simply found new land farther west. The other crops -- rice, indigo, corn, and some wheat -- made for no great wealth. Slaves cost something, not only to buy but to maintain, and some Southern planters thought that conditions had reached a point where a slave's labor no longer paid for his care. Eli Whitney came to the south in 1793, conveniently enough, during the time when Southern planters were in their most desperate days. In a little over a week, he started the biggest avalanche of production that any economy had ever experienced. The South would never be the same again.
The drive to end slavery in the United States was a long one, from being debated in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, to exposure of its ills in literature, from rebellions of slaves, to the efforts of people like Harriet Tubman to transport escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists had urged President Abraham Lincoln to free the slaves in the Confederate states from the very outset of the Civil War. By mid-1862, Lincoln had become increasingly convinced of the moral imperative to end slavery, but he hesitated (History.com). As commander-in-chief of the Union Army, he had military objectives to consider (History.com). On one hand, emancipation might