Civil War: The Cotton Industry

2. Sugarcane plantations – The sugarcane plantation was a plantation that had sugar as its main crop. Sugarcane became a popular crop throughout the world. These plantations were all across Brazil. The European workers died quickly while working in the plantations from different diseases.

This made the south a major figure in trade making them a lot of money. With the mass production that the cotton gin offered “The United states was producing more than half of the cotton growth

Sebastien Karo APUSH B4 Swenson Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South 1 - “King Cotton” The decline and limits of the tobacco, sugar, rice, and long staple cotton forced the region to shift to short staple cotton which was a hardier and coarser strain that grew very successfully in the South. It was harder to remove the seeds, but the cotton gin solved that problem. The demand of cotton was growing rapidly and as a result, ambitious men and women hurried to establish new cotton-growing regions and the production of cotton grew rapidly.

cultivated they exchanged for shoes, lace, agricultural tools and plates. Another aspect that had in their favor the colonies of the south was the climate, its climate was warmer that allowed them to cultivate throughout all the year. Tobacco and cotton were the two dominant crops in the southern colonies, and these products helped boost the economy and promote slavery in those colonies. They established a system of plantations that produced many crops and served to make international trade possible.

After the cotton gin was invented, The amount of raw cotton each year doubled every decade or so after the 1800's. By mid century, America was making most of the cotton and then shipping it to New England to have turned into cloth. Because of this, Tobacco started to loose value and sugar started to grow and develop. Many times, the slaves would be the ones to pick the cotton, so the number of slaves states in the United States began to increase majorly. The slaves were forced to work out on the farm picking cotton, they made up about 72% of the manufacturing capacity in the

Economic systems provide the framework for a society to properly allocate and distribute resources amongst itself. When multiple systems get interchanged and brought up at the same time in a country, something bad is bound to happen. For America in the 18th century, this was exactly the case. With the long standing planter-slaveholding system causing moral unrest in the country, an industrial capitalist economy quickly emerged. These two systems would divide the country, causing an eventual civil war.

The Portuguese took sugar cane grass from South and East Asia and they planted it in Brazil. Then, they sold the cane sugar to Europe and North America. This sale made North America involved with the Triangle Trade. “The triangle trade fed the innovation-driven insatiability of British mills. Only after industrialization could advanced nations benefit from free trade, and they used their empires to force it on the developing world.”

The 19th century was an era of dramatic change in the lives of African Americans. By the early 1800s, cotton was the most profitable cash crop, and slave owners focused on clearing lands and securing laborers to proliferate cotton production. The lack of available, fertile land in coastal areas compelled the move into the southern interior, sparking a massive westward migration of planters and slaves. The demands and rewards of the "King Cotton" economy resulted in a fivefold population increase during the first six decades of the 19th century, but it kept the South an unsophisticated agricultural economy.

The Southern Colonies had a mainly agriculture economy. There was good farmland in the South and there were a lot of plantations. The three main cash crops of the Southern Colonies were rice, indigo and tobacco. These generated lots of money and the slaves were necessary to it being successful. Farmers had their crops shipped downstream to the coast where it was directly sent to England.

Under a task system, slaves would be assigned several specific tasks for a particular day and when all their work was finished, the slaves could leave for the day. The expansion of the cotton dynasty carried millions of Americans to the southwest. Within fifty years the territorial size of the United States had nearly doubled as settlers were lured west in hopes of cheap land and rich natural resources. Southern plantations had become an important factor to economic success for both the United States and Southern economies. Plantations played a vital role in developing the world's global market by producing the four biggest cash crops: rice, cotton, tobacco, and sugar.

Due to increased productivity, cotton became a cash crop in the South

The manufacturers were faced with maintaining a high crop yield, but luckily the Caribbean islands provided an ideal location for growing cane sugar. Once plantations were constructed yet another issue confronted the owners, cheap labor. For the plantations to produce large enough quantities of sugar to fulfill the demand, many slaves were necessary; thus, a successful slave industry arose with the aid of these wealthy entrepreneurs who hoped to own successful plantations. The absentee owners in England, Spain, and France became increasingly wealthy as the demand and industry for sugar

The invention of the cotton gin created a market for cotton that the planters could hardly supply without cheap labor. Almost every available acre was brought under cotton culture as the small farmers were driven into the West. The demand for slaves to work the fields was enormous. This led to the development of the plantation system of the Far South and Southwest, where masters were near constantly extending their holdings of lands and slaves. Efforts to form new slave states were common, most prominent of these efforts was that to annex Texas.

As cotton farms grew, slavery also increased. Although machines helped speeding up the process of developing thread, cotton still needed to get picked up by hands. Slaves worked on the farms and picked up cotton, which only benefited planters (History Learning Site). Human resources affected the growth of cotton by allowing planters to make more money, and produce more cotton. The third resources is capital.

Lastly, with the expansion of the country to the west and into what we now know as Texas drove the need for more slaves to work the land. With the decrease of demand for tobacco and rice, plantations turned to the new crop cotton. In 1800 less than half a million bales of cotton