Slavery and the Cotton Revolution in America

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Everyone in modern day America can agree that Slavery was one of the evilest and inhumane acts to ever take place in US History. Slavery in the US was a legal system that allowed humans to be classified as property. Chattel Slaves were owned, bought, traded, and sold amongst slave owner’s to be used on plantations throughout the colonies. After the Revolutionary War, slavery was almost completely phased out in the North because it proved to be unprofitable and was declining in the South because tobacco was no longer considered a “cash crop”. However, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin: a machine that easily separated cotton from it’s seed, there was an increase in the need for slaves to work on cotton plantations in the south because …show more content…

John C. Calhoun and Frederick Law Olmstead are perfect representatives from each group that shows how divided the country was in regards to the nature of slavery in the 19th century. In The “Positive Good” of Slavery, John C. Calhoun takes a politically driven approach at detailing the positives of slavery while in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy, Frederick L Olmstead takes a more objective approach and questions both the positive and the negatives of slavery. Frederick Law Olmstead was an American landscape architect and journalist from Hartford, Connecticut. He was sent on a five-year assignment by the New York Daily Times to research life in the southern states and Texas from 1852-1857. Throughout his travels, he made observations about the prevalence of slavery amongst the states. In A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy, Frederick observes the hardships that the slaves have to endure while working on the plantations. His travels brought him to a rice plantation where he was told by a slave master, “I would as soon stand fifty feet from the best Kentucky rifleman and be shot at by the hour, as to spend a night on my plantation in

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