How did the invention of the cotton gin affect the economies of the North and South in the years between 1800 and 1850? Georgia in 1860 - New Georgia Encyclopedia Transformative Learning in the Humanities, THE SOUTH IN THE AMERICAN AND WORLD MARKETS, Cotton is King: The Antebellum South, 18001860, The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492, Early Globalization: The Atlantic World, 14921650, Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 15001700, Rule Britannia! What was the military significance of completing a canal across Panama . The abolition of the foreign slave trade in 1807 led to _______. The state was swept along by the global economic force created by its cotton production, the demand by cotton textile manufacturing in Europe, and New Yorks financial and commercial dealings. Nevertheless, Georgians raised 500,000 bales in 1850, second only to Alabama, and nearly 702,000 bales in 1860, behind Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. Although the Jeffersonian vision of the settlement of new U.S. territories entailed white yeoman farmers single-handedly carving out small independent farms, the reality proved quite different. As a Premium user you get access to background information and details about the release of this statistic. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-89701. However, the very cotton that provided the South with such economic potency also increased its reliance on the larger U.S. and world markets, which suppliedamong other thingsthe food and clothes slaves needed, the furniture and other manufactured goods that defined the southern standard of comfortable living, and the banks from which southerners borrowed needed funds. Not only were the fibers sold, but also the cottonseed was crushed for cooking oil, hulls were converted to cattle feed, and portions of the plant were used to make an early type of plastic. The 1914-1915 season totaled 16.5 million bales. Cotton and the Civil War - 2008-07 A demand for it already existed in the industrial textile mills in Great Britain, and in time, a steady stream of slave-grown American cotton would also supply northern textile mills. Missouri upland cotton production in 2017 was valued at $261,348,000 with 750,000,480 pound bales produced in that year. Georgia had led the world in cotton production during the first boom in the 1820s, with 150,000 bales in 1826; later slumps led to some agricultural diversification. Mississippi and its neighbors Alabama, western Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas provided the cheap land that was suitable for cotton production. The first mechanical harvester consisted of fence posts attached to a draft animal and dragged between rows to dislodge the cotton. The improvements allowed cotton fabrics to be mass produced and, therefore, affordable to millions of people. As the price of cotton increased to 9, 10, then 11 per pound over the next ten years, the average cost of an enslaved male laborer likewise rose to $775, $900, and then more than $1,600. [2] Cotton production is a $21billion-per-year industry in the United States, employing over 125,000 people in total,[1] as against growth of forty billion pounds a year from 77 million acres of land covering more than eighty countries. New York: Random House, 1967, Foner, Philip Sheldon. On September 25, 1961, Herbert Lee, a black cotton farmer and voter-registration organizer, was shot in the head and killed by white state legislator E. H. Hurst in Liberty, Mississippi. [28] Four out of the top five importers of U.S.-produced cotton are in North America; the principal destination is Honduras, with about 33% of the total, although this has been in decline slightly over recent years. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many former tenants and sharecroppers returned to farmwork, but after the United States entered World War II in 1941, farmworkers moved again to the cities for work in war-related industries. By the 1850s, slavery and cotton had become so intertwined . Cotton production in Mississippi exploded from nothing in 1800 to 535.1 million pounds in 1859; Alabama ranked second with 440.5 million pounds. How much a cotton operation could produce depended on how many hands (men women and children) were available. Answer 2. Apush Chapter 10 Flashcards | Quizlet This lucrative international trade brought new wealth and new residents to the city. Leading States for cotton production Cotton was first grown in Texas by Spanish missionaries. Every penny counts! Annual production slumped from 1,365,000 bales in the 1910s to 801,000 in the 1920s. It has been estimated that New York received forty percent of all cotton revenues since the city supplied insurance, shipping, and financing services and New York merchants sold goods to Southern planters. The trade with the South, which has been estimated at $200,000,000 annually, was an impressive sum at the time. The first half of the nineteenth century saw a market revolution in the United States, one in which industrialization brought changes to both the production and the consumption of goods. Former tobacco farmers in the older states of Virginia and Maryland found themselves with surplus slaves whom they were obligated to feed, clothe, and shelter. By 1840, New Orleans alone had 12 percent of the nations total banking capital, and visitors often commented on the great cultural diversity of the city. By 1850, 1.8 million of the 3.2 million slaves in the country's fifteen slave states produced cotton and by 1860, slave labor produced over two billion pounds of cotton annually. On the eve of the Civil War, almost 1/3rd of . [21] By the 1950s, after many years of development, the mechanical cotton picker had become effective enough to be commercially viable, and it quickly gained appeal and affordability throughout the U.S. cotton growing area. By 1860, Great Britain, the worlds most powerful country, had become the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and a significant part of that nations industry was cotton textiles. Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. Profit from the additional features of your individual account. Agriculture in Georgia - New Georgia Encyclopedia [23] As a result of the devastating harvest of 1922, some 50,000 black cotton workers left South Carolina, and by the 1930s the state population had declined some 15%, largely due to cotton stagnation. China imported about 11% of U.S. cotton last year, which was a sharp increase over previous seasons, allowing it to overtake El Salvador, which has consistently imported about 8-9% of the total. The spindles add moisture to the locks to make them cling to the barbs, and rubber doffers loosen the cotton, which is then blown into a steel basket. How many slaves a year escaped to freedom? The Civil War (1861-65) dramatically changed the state's agricultural labor force by freeing thousands of enslaved laborers, but cotton continued to be the main crop in many parts of Georgia. The cotton gin allowed a slave to remove the seeds from fifty pounds of cotton a day, compared to one pound if done by hand. Auctions of cheap Indian lands as a result of cessions of land by the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations drew bidders from the South and East. New Orleans, the hub of commerce, boasted the largest slave market in the United States and grew to become the nations fourth-largest city as a result. [37], From 1817, when it became a state, to 1860 Mississippi was the largest cotton-producing state in the United States. [3], The average production of lint per acre in 1914 was estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture to be 209 pounds, a nominal change from 1911 when it was 208 pounds. This particular chapter of the story of slavery in the United States starts at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. * 480-pound net weight bales. Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the mechanization of agriculture created additional pressures on those working in the industry. Beginning in 1872, thousands of immigrants from the Deep South and from Europe poured into the Blackland Prairie of Central Texas and began growing cotton. Between 1860 and 1870, Brazilian annual cotton exports rose 400%, from 12,000 to 60,000 tonnes. Exporting at such high volumes made the United States the undisputed world leader in cotton production. Cotton and Slavery in the United States, 1790-1860 Source: Historical Statistics of the United States: 1789-1945 Year 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 Cotton Production 1,000 bales 3 73 178 335 732 1,348 2,136 3,841 . Technology and a world demand for cotton products, however, could not offset the devastation of the boll weevil. [10] Prior to the U.S. Civil War, cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. After the seeds had been removed, the cotton was pressed into bales. By 1860, the region was producing two-thirds of the worlds cotton. In the 1990s cotton was also planted in the Sacramento Valley. Then you can access your favorite statistics via the star in the header. Once the cotton grower or producer knows the class and value of his cotton, he sells it to buyers around the world by means of computers. Mechanical strippers, which followed, pulled the boll off the plant by means of revolving rollers or brushes. This economic growth exacted a severe and tragic human price through slavery and the prejudicial treatment of free Black people. Petit Gulf cotton grew extremely well in different soils and climates. Some western states, such as Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, tried to exclude African Americans at the same time they were aggressively recruiting millions of White European immigrants. The result was a large-scale exodus of the white and black cotton farmers from the south. Mississippis social and economic histories in early statehood were driven by cotton and slave labor, and the two became intertwined in America. In the years before the Civil War, the South produced the bulk of the worlds supply of cotton. Cotton from strippers or spindle pickers is emptied directly into the box, and an operator in the cab compresses the cotton with the tramper. Why did some southerners believe their region was immune to the effects of the market revolution? devoting their attention to the production of this staple crop. How does he characterize Eliza? While tobacco was a labor-intensive crop that required many people to cultivate it, wheat was not. California is the largest producer of Pima cotton in the United States. In 1835, Joseph Holt Ingraham wrote: Truly does New-Orleans represent every other city and nation upon earth. To use individual functions (e.g., mark statistics as favourites, set The most notable change in the production of cotton in the twentieth century was the geographical shift from East and Central Texas to the High Plains and the Rio Grande valley. West Texas farmers usually plant a smaller quantity of seed per acre than East Texas growers. upon the Southern mind before 1860 that it became within itself a cause to be defended. A specially designed module mover, a modified flatbed trailer, picks up the module and carries it to the gin, where it is unloaded into the cotton storage yard or directly under the suction telescope for ginning. The two companies represented investors or speculators from New York, Boston, and other New Englanders. As a result, Georgia's cotton economy peaked on the eve of World War I (1917-18). According to the University of Missouri, cotton production per acreage in this state peaked in the 1953 and decreased to its lowest point in 1967. Spindle pickers are used in areas of high rainfall where plants grow tall before they are defoliated. The introduction of barbed wire in the 1870s and the building of railroads further stimulated the industry. Thus, the cotton economy controlled the destiny of enslaved Africans. [7] These bales usually measure approximately 17 cubic feet (0.48 cubic meters) and weigh 500 pounds (230 kilograms). These bales, weighing about four hundred to five hundred pounds, were wrapped in burlap cloth and sent down the Mississippi River. As the cotton industry boomed in the South, the Mississippi River quickly became the essential water highway in the United States. In 1884 Robert S. Munger of Mexia revolutionized the slow, animal-powered method of "plantation ginning" by devising the faster, automated "system ginning," the process in use today. His first book, The Sun That Never Rose, predicted Japan's economic stagnation in the 1990s. New Yorkers even dominated a booming slave trade in the 1850s. The slave economy (article) | Khan Academy Cotton gave the South power both real and imagined. Related Questions. The slaves who built this cotton kingdom with their labor started by clearing the land. The United States is the world's top exporter of cotton. By 1860, New York had become the capital of the South because of its dominant role in the cotton trade. One bale of cotton is about 500 pounds. In 1849 a census of the cotton production of the state reported 58,073 bales (500 pounds each). Whitney is given credit for unleashing the explosion of American cotton production which was, in turn, propelled by the seemingly insatiable appetite for cotton from the British cotton textile mills. [7], Native Americans were observed growing cotton by the Coronado expedition in the early 1540s. [24], In 2020, production totaled 14.061 million bales. In general, planters expected a good hand, or slave, to work ten acres of land and pick two hundred pounds of cotton a day. It was here that Pima Indians cultivated various cotton hybrids seeking ideal traits. Cotton farming was also subsidized in the country by the U.S. government[citation needed], as a trade policy, specifically to the "corporate agribusiness" almost ruined the economy of people in many underdeveloped countries such as Mali and many other developing countries (in view of low profits in the light of stiff competition from the United States, the workers could hardly make both ends meet to survive with cotton sales). Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191500/cotton-production-in-the-us-since-2000/, Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)*, Immediate access to statistics, forecasts & reports, Total U.S. cotton plantings and harvestings 2001-2022, U.S. acreage of planted cotton 2015/16-2021/22, U.S. acreage of harvested cotton 2015/16-2021/22, U.S. acreage of genetically modified cotton 2014-2019, Cotton production value in the U.S. 2000-2022, Leading U.S. states based on cotton production value 2021, Cottonseed production in the U.S. 2001-2022, U.S. cottonseed production value 2000-2021, Supply of cottonseed products in the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, U.S. cottonseed oil consumption 2000-2021, Exports of cottonseed from the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, Exports of cottonseed oil from the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, Cotton production in China 2021, by region, Share of cotton in China's agricultural acreage 2000-2017, Brazil: harvested area of cotton 2022-2031, Area of sorghum for grain harvested in the U.S. 2001-2022, U.S. plantings and harvestings of oats 2001-2022, U.S. barley plantings and harvestings 2001-2022, Yield per harvested acre of corn for silage in the U.S. 2001-2022, Area of sunflowers planted and harvested 2001-2022, Global cottonseed meal and oil production 2009-2018, Cotton production volume in Egypt 2007-2022, Black winter truffle: volume harvested by production countries in the EU 2012-2016, Truffle distribution in France 2014, by country, Wild harvest area in India from FY 2011-2022, Total area harvested for barley production across the UAE 2014 to 2018, Import value of cotton in Ghana 2010-2019, Production volume of castor oil seeds in India FY 2012-2020, Canada: harvested seeded area of chickpeas 2016/17-2022/23, Import value of cotton into Ethiopia 2015-2021, Find your information in our database containing over 20,000 reports, top producer of cotton in the United States. In 1817, only seventeen plied the waters of western rivers, but by 1837, there were over seven hundred steamships in operation. 5 million. In addition to dominating the slave trade, New York denied voting rights to its small free Black population, which comprised only one percent of the population. Furthermore, cotton supports a USD 3 trillion global fashion industry, which includes clothes with unique designs from reputed brands, with global clothing exports valued at USD 1.3 trillion in 2016. There was little . 11.3: Cotton and Slavery - Humanities LibreTexts In 1850, twenty-five percent of the population of New Orleans, Louisiana, was from the North and ten percent of the population in Mobile, Alabama, was former New Yorkers. [3], Cotton has been planted and cultured in the United States since before the American Revolution, especially in South Carolina. The slave states of South Carolina and Georgia were adamant about having slavery protected by the Constitution. After the seeds had been removed, the cotton was pressed into bales. The lint is baled in a universal-density press that eliminates the need for the old-fashioned compress, and the bale is packaged in synthetic bagging. Currently, you are using a shared account. 1000. Large production in the latter areas was obtained by extensive use of fertilizers and irrigation. By the end of this section, you will be able to: A project created by ISKME. The ship, Glad Tidings, with a cargo of American cotton entering the port of Liverpool in the mid-1800s. In both cases tenants and sharecroppers, whether White or Black, bought such goods as shoes, medicines, and staple food items from the landowners' commissaries, and the landowners kept the accounts. His next book, Cotton and Race in America (1787-1930): The Human Price of Economic Growth, will be published in 2007. As a commodity, cotton had the advantage of being easily stored and transported. The best of the best: the portal for top lists & rankings: Strategy and business building for the data-driven economy: Industry-specific and extensively researched technical data (partially from exclusive partnerships). Slow work pace, pilfer in-house goods, sabotaged crop production, and damaged tools. TSHA | Cotton Culture Cotton accounted for over half of all American exports during the first half of the 19th century. In 1807, the U.S. Congress abolished the foreign slave trade, a ban that went into effect on January 1, 1808. Business & Slavery: The New York Merchants & the Irrepressible Conflict. A close view of a stalk of cotton. In these spaces, whites socialized in the ships saloons and dining halls while black slaves served them (Figure). After a few months, he wrote the now-famous letter to his father in which he described his discovery: I involuntarily happened to be thinking on the subject [of cleaning cotton] and struck out a plan of a Machine [to remove the cotton seed]I concluded to relinquish my school and turn my attention to perfecting the Machine. That machine was the cotton gin. A paid subscription is required for full access. How many bales of cotton were produced in Georgia? For example, in the 1830s, the largest purchasers of Chickasaw land in Mississippi were the American Land Company and the New York Land Company. If the land has any appreciable slope, it should be terraced or contoured to prevent soil erosion and conserve water. Print from The Illustrated London News courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-64405. Cotton has many uses besides clothing, linens, draperies, upholstery, and carpet. Most New Yorkers did not care that the cotton was produced by enslaved people because for them it became sanitized once it left the plantation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1972, Hughes, Jonathan. When the delegates wrote and agreed upon the Constitution, cotton production was virtually nonexistent in America. Directly accessible data for 170 industries from 50 countries and over 1 million facts: Get quick analyses with our professional research service. In Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and elsewhere in the South, slave auctions happened every day. Thus, the market revolution transformed the South just as it had other regions. Left: Acres of upland cotton harvested as a percent of harvested cropland acreage (2007). For many slaves, the domestic slave trade incited the terror of being sold away from family and friends. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-49307. The delegates chose a union with slavery. After the war, when steel and rubber became available to manufacturers again, farmers began to mechanize their methods of planting, cultivating, and harvesting, thus eliminating the need for tenants and sharecroppers, many of whom did not return to farmwork, and leading to new practices in cotton production that remain in use today. Farmers first saw the ravaging effect of the weevil, which had spread northward from Mexico, near Corpus Christi during the 1890s. Cotton and tobacco prices collapsed in 1920 following overproduction and the boll weevil pest wiped out the sea island cotton crop in 1921. 2,250,000 Which decade experienced the greatest increase in the number of slaves? Cotton compresses, huge machines that reduced 500-pound bales to about half their ginned, or flat-bale, size for convenience in shipping, were constructed along railroad rights-of-way in many towns. [23] Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the main reason is undoubtedly the mechanization of agriculture in explaining why many blacks moved to northern American cities in the 1940s and 1950s during the "Great Migration" as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed. Much of the corn and pork that slaves consumed came from farms in the West. Thus, the delegates faced the question: should there be a United States with slavery, or no United States without slavery? Kentucky slaveholders sold some seventy-one thousand individuals. Legal Notices. However, following the War of 1812, a huge increase in production resulted in the so-called cotton boom, and by midcentury, cotton became the key cash crop (a crop grown to sell rather than for the farmers sole use) of the southern economy and the most important American commodity. Cotton | South Carolina Encyclopedia [35] Californias cotton is mostly grown in seven counties within the San Joaquin Valley, though Imperial Valley and Palo Verde Valley also have acres planted. Indeed, the number of southern cotton bales exported to Europe dropped from 3 million bales in 1860 to mere thousands. Agents of the United States Department of Agriculture and the county extension service, which was begun at Texas A&M College, set up demonstration farms and experiment stations and visited individual farms to show farmers how to improve their crops through better methods of cultivation. Cotton and slavery occupied a centraland intertwinedplace in the nineteenth-century economy. [22], The cotton industry in the United States hit a crisis in the early 1920s. Within a few years, boll weevil damage affected crops throughout Texas and the Cotton Belt, the cotton-growing states of the Deep South. Major new ports developed at St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and other locations. Whenever new slave states entered the Union, white slaveholders sent armies of slaves to clear the land in order to grow and pick the lucrative crop. How did slaves resist their masters? E. A. Miller, How many bales of cotton were produced in 1860? - Answers Steamboats, a crucial part of the transportation revolution thanks to their enormous freight-carrying capacity and ability to navigate shallow waterways, became a defining component of the cotton kingdom. E. A. Miller. In the eastern part of the state, cotton is planted mostly on medium-high beds to allow better drainage and to enable the soil to warm up quicker in the spring, while in West Texas and other sections with low rainfall, cotton is planted below the level of the land. January 12, 2023. A quick glance at the numbers shows what happened. Sharecroppers furnished only their labor, while the landowner supplied animals, houses, seed, and tools, and at the end of the cotton season the sharecroppers received half the value of the crop. Another type of harvester is the spindle picker. It was produced on more than forty percent of the state's improved farmland and provided the basis of the state's economy and the tenancy system. Cotton in a Global Economy: Mississippi (1800-1860). [14][15], The United States, observed in 1940 that "many thousands of black cotton farmers each year now go to the polls, stand in line with their white neighbors, and mark their ballots independently without protest or intimidation, in order to determine government policy toward cotton production control. 4,000,000 or four million bales of cotton were produced in the 1860's. At least that is what I read. The 1889 census reported 3,934,525 acres producing 1.5 million bales. The Souths dependence on cotton was matched by its dependence on slaves to harvest the cotton. A high demand for cotton during World War I stimulated production, but a drop in prices after the war led many tenants and sharecroppers to abandon farming altogether and move to the cities for better job opportunities. Mapping History : The Spread of Cotton and of Slavery 1790-1860 - Introduction Introduction This module has four parts. To begin King Cotton diplomacy, some 2.5 million bales of cotton were burned in the South to create a cotton shortage. Boston: Little Brown, 1986, Bruchey, Stuart. It became a major crop in the 1930s. ", Snow, Whitney Adrienne. Most impressively of all, "New England mills consumed 283.7 million pounds of cotton, or 67 percent of the 422.6 million pounds of cotton used by U.S. mills in 1860." It should be grown only on naturally fertile soils or on soils enriched by inoculated and properly fertilized legumes, barnyard manure, or commercial fertilizer. Factors that caused the decline of cotton production in the state after the 1920s were the federal government's control program, which cut acreage in half, the increase in foreign production (the state had been exporting approximately 85 percent of the total crop), the introduction of synthetic fibers, the tariff, the lack of a lint-processing industry in Texas, and World War II, which brought a shortage of labor and disrupted commerce. It is best not to plant until the soil has warmed up enough to ensure quick and uniform germination. The Role of the Yankee in the Old South. [7] The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944. In 1879 some 2,178,435 acres produced 805,284 bales. Whitney gave up his career as a teacher to devote full time to manufacturing cotton gins and making money. Eli Whitney (1765-1825) Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-8283. The Economics of Cotton - U.S. History Many of the trappings of domestic life, such as carpets, lamps, dinnerware, upholstered furniture, books, and musical instrumentsall the accoutrements of comfortable living for southern whiteswere made in either the North or Europe. [3] The final estimate of U.S. cotton production in 2012 was 17.31 million sales,[4] with the corresponding figures for China and India being 35 million and 26.5 million bales, respectively. Fred C. Elliott, The North Carolina cotton crop began to grow between 1860 with 145,514 bales and 1870 with 203,000 bales (480-lb. American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860 (a bale is a compressed bundle of cotton weighing between 400 and 500 pounds). This spacing helps to make the plants fruit earlier than would a wider spacing and usually results in higher yields. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it rose in prominence and importance largely because of the cotton boom, steam-powered river traffic, and its strategic position near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Westward Expansion, 1840-1900, Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business, 1870-1900, The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870-1900, Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920, Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914, The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation, 1919-1929, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?