Cotton, Slavery, and Controversy: The South 1815-1860

Slavery was a big part of the South to help it grow and prosper with the boom of cotton. However, as the years went on the debate about whether slavery should or should not be banned increased. Between 1815-1860 there was an initial growth in slavery throughout the south, but as the years progressed, the controversy of slavery increases and caused the decline of slavery.
After the War of 1812, the relation between cotton and slaves was the reason for the spread of the plantation system to the west. Cotton production, “exploded from 73,000 bales in 1800 to more than 2 million bales by mid-century, thanks to fertility of virgin land and to technological changes, such as improved seed varieties and steam-powered cotton gins,” (Goldfield et.

al, 282). 90% of the cotton output was due to slave labor. The plantations were, “large productive units specializing in a cash crop and employing at least twenty slaves,” (282). These plantations were the primary economic establishment in the Lower South. A lot of recent studies said that the, “average rate of return on capital invested in a slave was about 10% a year, a rate that at least equaled that of alternative investments in the South or the North,” (283). The big demand for cotton outside of the South was the reason for the prosperity of slavery.
The internal slave trade lost about 10% of the slaves in the Upper South with every decade after the 1820s.

The Missouri compromise starts this decline by banning slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri. Then in 1831, William Lloyd Garrison starts publishing the paper, the Liberator, which supports the complete abolition of slavery. In 1846, the democratic representative, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, introduced the Wilmot Proviso. This was an attempt to ban slavery in the territory that was gained from the Mexican War. The southerners blocked the proviso, but the debate over slavery became heated. In 1849, Harriet Tubman fled from slavery and became the most applauded leaders of the Underground Railroad, which was a support system that helped fugitive slaves escape from the South. By the 1850s, slavery was evidently decreasing in the Upper South. Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 1852. This was one of the most powerful pieces to arouse anti-slavery opinions. In 1857, the decline of slavery took a little halt with the Dred Scott case. This stated that Congress did not have the right to ban slavery in the states, and the slaves were not to be considered citizens. Then in 1859, John Brown and twenty-one of his followers captured the federal arsenal in an effort to initiate a slave

revolt.
Throughout the time period of 1815-1860, the influx of slavery originally prospered, but then began to decline with all the opposition from the North. The overall population of slavery fell steadily after 1830 due to all the threats about slavery.