Reference no: EM133576040
Read the "Invention of the Cotton Gin" article and answer the following questions.
Since colonial times, the Southern economy had thrived on the production of cash crops (a crop sold for profit not personal use). In the upper Southern states-Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee-farmers grew tobacco. Rice paddies dominated the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. In Louisiana and parts of eastern Texas, fields of sugarcane stretched for miles. Cotton production, which came to dominate the South during the 1800s, was only a minor cash crop until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The impact of the cotton gin was profound. In 1792 the year before the cotton gin was invented, the South produced about 6,000 bales of cotton. By 1801 annual production reached 100,000 bales. By the late 1840s, production increased to over 2 million, and in 1860 production reached almost 4 million bales.
The invention of the cotton gin increased the productivity (relative measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, or system) of cotton producers at the same time that the demand (the quantity of a commodity that consumers are willing to purchase) for cotton was increasing rapidly. European textile mills were expanding at the time, and they clamored for all the cotton they could get. With the invention of the cotton gin, the South could provide an ever-increasing supply (the quantity of a commodity that producers have available for sale) of cotton for these mills. As cotton plantations sprang up across the Deep South, the demand for enslaved labor skyrocketed. Congress had outlawed the foreign slave trade in 1808, but a high birthrate among enslaved women-encouraged by slaveholders eager to sell new laborers at high prices-meant that the enslaved population kept growing. Between 1820 and 1850, the number of people who were enslaved in the South rose from about 1.5 million to nearly 4 million.
A. How did the invention of the cotton gin affect the Southern economy?
B. Why do you think such a large percentage of enslaved workers was used for the cultivation of cotton?
C. What effect did the rise of cotton production have on the slave trade?
D. Describe the significance of cotton in the national economy in the 1800s. Use statistics and specific examples from the excerpt to support your answer.