1776-1820---Invention of The Cotton Gin

OCTOBER 28, 1793:            

Eli Whitney, a Massachusetts inventor, applied for a patent on his “cotton gin.” 

This “gin” (or engine) was designed to simplify the laborious process of separating cotton seeds from cotton fibers, a process without which the cotton is useless. 

Prior to the invention of the cotton gin it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds. This rendered cotton cultivation financially infeasible as most growers could not afford the labor-intensive cost of raising and preparing cotton for market. 

Slavery was, in fact, dying out, both North and South, since the expense of keeping slaves exceeded their return on value. In 1793, there were only 700,000 slaves in the United States.

With the invention of the gin, a team of two or three slaves could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day. 

Cotton cultivation boomed exponentially, and so did the call for slaves in the South. By 1861, there were 4.3 million slaves in the country. Marginal planters became rich. Rich planters became wealthy. And wealthy planters became politically powerful. As a result, pressure began to build in Washington D.C. to open land in the new Territories to cotton (and hence slavery).

These 4,300,000 slaves were owned by a coterie of some 300,000 slaveowners. Most slaveowners owned only a small number of slaves. The fantasy of “Tara,” with fields full of diligently working blacks was for the most part just that, a fantasy. However, smallholding slaveowners were tacitly encouraged to view themselves as gentleman farmers by the wealthy planter class so that the planter class could maintain its iron grip on the south’s economic and social structures.  

For the smallholding slaveowner, slaves were, like other property, often inherited from parents and grandparents along with the farmstead and the house. Southerners as a rule liked to characterize the master and slave relationship as one that transcended generational lines, a kind of symbiotic relationship through which both slave and master profited.

The reality was far different. Slaves were expensive to purchase (upwards of $1,000 per person in 1860 or close to $30,000 in 2010 dollars), and expensive to own, given the needs of food, shelter, clothing and medical care.  For the smallholding slave owner, slaves were often their major lifetime investment (much as a home is for the modern American family). Most slaveowners were, like farmers throughout history, frequently cash poor, often indebted, commonly carrying property mortgages, and at the mercy of the weather to produce a good crop. In bad seasons and good, slaves represented a form of fungible wealth which could be sold, traded or even rented out for income. This, in part, explains the vehemence of most slaveholders against the abolitionist movement which meant to strip slaveholders of such liquidity as they had. In short, the surrender of slave property would lead to their economic devastation. Even a partial compensation plan (as Abraham Lincoln posited several times during the Civil War) was a gateway to tremendous economic losses.   

Slaves were all too frequently sold for quick cash: “extra” children became a source or ready cash, hardworking skilled fathers brought premium prices, and young women of childbearing age were in demand for owners who wished to increase their slaveholdings cheaply.  This vision of slaves as inanimate property exploded the structure of slave families, and had a multigenerational densensitizing impact on southern whites.

 

Distribution of Slaveholders by Size of Holdings, 1860 *

 
 

	TOTAL SLAVEHOLDERS	OWNERS OF 1-4 SLAVES	OWNERS OF 5-19 SLAVES	OWNERS OF 20-49 SLAVES	OWNERS OF 50-99 SLAVES	OWNERS OF 100-499 SLAVES	OWNERS OF 500+ SLAVES
A L	33,730	14,404 (42.7%)	13,295 (39.4%)	4,344 (12.9%)	1,341 (4.0%)	346 (1.0%)	-
A R	1,149	659  (57.4%)	424   (36.9%)	56 (4.9%)	10 (0.9%)	-	-
F L	5,152	2,233 (43.3%)	2,111 (41.0%)	603  (11.7%)	158 (3.1%)	47 (0.9%)	-
G A	41,084	17,534 (42.7%)	17,187 (41.8%)	5,049 (12.3%)	1,102 (2.7%)	211 (0.5%)	1
L A	22,033	10,235 (46.5%)	7,873 (35.7%)	2,349 (10.7%)	1,029 (4.7%)	543 (2.5%)	4
M S	30,943	12,689 (41.0%)	12,359 (39.9%)	4,220 13.6(%)	1,359 (4.4%)	315 (1.0%)	1
N C	34,658	16,071 (46.4%)	14,522 (41.9%)	3,321 (9.6%)	611 (1.8%)	133 (0.4%)	-
S C	26,701	10,017 (37.5%)	11,392 (42.7%)	3,646 (13.7%)	1,197 (4.5%)	441 (1.7%)	8
T N	36,844	19,179 (52.1%)	14,553 (39.5%)	2,550 (6.9%)	335 (0.9%)	47 (0.1%)	-
T X	21,878	11,342 (51.8%)	8,373 (38.3%)	1,827 (8.4%)	282 (1.3%)	54 (0.2%)	-
V A	52,128	25,355 (48.6%)	20,996 (40.3%)	4,917 (9.4%)	746 (1.4%)	114 (0.2%)	-
T O  T A L	306,300	139,718 (45.6%)	123,085 (40.2%)	32,882 (10.7%)	8,170 (2.7%)	2,251 (0.7%)	14

   

As can be seen from the above chart (based on the U.S. Eighth Decennial Census, 1860) only 1% of slaveowners owned more than 50 slaves, and those who owned many hundreds could easily be gathered ‘round one dining table of the time (as they sometimes were).   In large part, these “1%ers”, with their disparate economic power and political and social influence, were the driving force behind secessionism.