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Societal changes resulted from the American Civil War
The impact cotton had on America in the 19th century
The impact of the American civil war
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The American civil war was an important event in the history of United States. It changed the internal structure of American society and had a greater impact than the revolution. The basis of the civil war was due to slavery. It overthrew the once dominated planter elite politically and its slaveholding class. During early decades of the nineteen-century the planters of American south were not about to follow the path of gradual emancipation that the northern states had raged. The economies of the south and north, continues to go in opposing directs. By 1791, they were already producing 2 millions of pounds of cotton that made British textile industry to have a vast appetite for cotton corp. That made the North and South profit from growing cotton. That made southern states grew from eight states too fifteen states. The population in the south grew more than five times. The growing demand for cotton sustained this expansion. Between 1830-1860 world demand for cotton consumption had increases by 5% per year. Cotton expert helped balance the country international trade and finances, to maximize profits the southerners farmers are planters import the food from the northwest and pushed for utilized vast land to grew cotton. The plantations were way of life in the south which in 1670, Englishmen came to South Carolina and expand the plantation. By that they brought their African slaves which later have increased to 263000. Therefore, plantations and institution of slavery spread across the South. The large plantations and the system of slave labor shaped the culture of the Southern colonies. The plantation owners had time for education, and they had money to buy things from England. Owners of the largest plantations beca... ... middle of paper ... ...th a nearly challenging obstacle. They produced too little cotton to be able to cover the costs of shipping it to a processing plant, most likely in the North or England, their primary consumers. Within ten years, cotton became the main crop in the south. In 1790, before the invention of the cotton gin, about 3000 bales of cotton were produced in the United States. Ten years later 100000 thousands bales were produced. The Virginia Company intended to send cotton plants to Jamestown in 1607, but the rapid emergence of tobacco as the colony's cash crop doomed early cotton cultivation despite efforts to encourage it by both Governors William Berkeley and Edmund Andros. Even the depression in the tobacco economy from 1702-1708 failed to convince planters to switch from tobacco since cotton depleted the soil and required so much hand labor that it was unprofitable.
The Virginians became greedier for land and started to grow tobacco all over Jamestown. This encouraged the wide use of plantations that required surplus labor. Seven years later, in 1619, a Dutch warship sold the Virginians African slaves, creating the seed of slave trade. Thus the use of indentured slaves decreased and was replaced with African slaves as triangular trade (trans-Atlantic slave trade) increased.
The American Civil War was caused because of the North and South differences in economies, disagreements about abolishing slavery and whether the state or federal government had more power. These three factors played a key role in America's deadliest war. Understanding the causes of the Civil War is important because the war was one of the most important events in our nation's history. After the Civil War all men were truly created equal, it reunited the country as one, and redefined what it meant to be an
Secondly, the demand for cotton grew tremendously as cotton became an important raw material for the then developing cotton industries in the North and Britain. The growing of cotton revived the Southern economy and the plantations spread across the south, and by 1850 the southern U.S produced more than 80% of cotton all over the world. As this cotton based economy of the south grew so did the slave labor to work in these large scale plantations since they were more labor-intensive...
Following the American Civil War, the whole nation was forever changed and was the result of many good and bad things. Although it was a very costly war and was So, the Civil War did define us and made us the good and the bad things we are and led to an extremely significant change because slavery was abolished once and for all and African American rights followed many years later, the Federal Government imposed more power over the states, our country was divided for a while, and it left the nation in debt due to the fact that we fought each other.
Whitney’s new invention partnered with the demand from Britain resulted in the dramatic increase of cotton production in America. The swift increase in cotton ultimately resulted in the need for more cheap labor to keep up with the demand. From 1800 to 1860 American cotton production skyrocketed from 156,000 bales to 4,000,000 bales. Subsequently, the slave population raised from 900,000 to 4,000,000 in the
Tangibly speaking, the two sections grew apart in things like their economies, views, and their populations. In 1820, the economy of the South was already heavily centered on cotton, but not to the extent that it would become. For example, from 1815 to 1819, cotton made up about 39% of the total of all American exports. From the mid-1830s on, though, they accounted for more
Plantations did not always start out with the availability to produce crops. It took a lot of manpower and time to get the land into shape. Slaves were brought into the plantations when it was just deserted land, and forced to chop down trees, cultivate the land, and build manmade water canals. The best example we can see of this is the "Carolina Rice Plantation." Hiring the slaves to do these jobs made the land more valuable in the long run.
By the 1830s, "cotton was king". It was also king in the United States, because America was competing for economic strength with the rest of the world. Plantation-grown cotton was the foundation of the southern economy. (Howard, 2013)
Cotton was an extremely labor-intensive crop that requires hours of manual labor to harvest and many more in preparation for spinning. Many Americans looked for ways to improve this process and make it faster, however it was not until the American Industrial Revolution came about that great steps were made in this process. When the American Industrial Revolution hit, it brought about a major change and was arguably one of the greatest factors in the modernization of the United States. Along with this Industrial Revolution came a great invention in the world of cotton which many historians argue sparked the revolution itself. Eli Whitney brought a revolution to cotton production when he invented the cotton gin. This machine quickly separated the cotton seeds from the cotton and allowed it to be processed at rates up to twenty times faster than before. The cotton production in the U.S. and its annual yield had been relatively low before the invention of the cotton gin, but after its introduction annual cotton production soared to all-time highs. Along with the cotton gin, large mills and metal tools vastly enhanced the production of cotton in the 1800’s. The production of cotton was primarily centered on its export to Europe and these new technologies produced a new age of production in New England and created a vast domestic market for southern cotton farmers. This European cotton trade produced a strong market that supported many southern states. Europeans were the primary source in turning this raw cotton into textiles through the African cotton trade. “Europeans also learned that the African trade could be integrated within a wider space of exchange that encompassed the entire Atlantic. This was called ‘triangular trade’ in which raw materials (cotton) were traded from the Americas to Europe, where they served to manufacture and print cotton textiles. These textiles were then in turn sold on international
In the beginning of the 1800s, economic diversities between the two different regions had also grown. By the year 1860, cotton was the chief crop for the South; it also represented fifty-seven percent of all American exports. The prosperity of cotton fulfilled the South's reliance on the plantation system and its crucial elementslavery.
The Civil War was an important war over the freedom of slaves in the U.S.. The Civil War is well known for being caused by the issue of slavery, but it is really a combination of different events and actions that caused tensions to rise throughout the country. The economic and political issues in the U.S., along with certain actions caused the Civil war, which is one of the United States’s worst wars. All in all, the Civil War was one of the most devastating wars for our country as a whole, and the process of rebuilding would take years and is no easy job.
Late 18th century the tobacco fields weakened to produce crops around the same time the textile industry in England had a big demand for cotton. The cotton demand was hastened by separating the seeds from the cotton by
Cotton dates back all the way to 3000 BC. According to Royal Botanic Gardens, the earliest written reference to cotton lies within South Asia, but fragments of cotton fabric dated back to the Indus Valley. In South Asia there was a sudden boom in cotton trade. Cotton would be traded throughout European countries. In early America, cotton was an economic gold mine. The Chesapeake and Delaware bays have been home to cotton manufacturers from 1736 (Industry in America 1). In the early 1800’s, the slave trade facilitated the rise of “King Cotton”, which was the term for the use of slavery to harvest cotton.
The invention of the cotton gin made growing cotton practical, and cotton began dominating the growing fields. Cotton was a crop that could be grown almost anywhere because it seemed to need only the land to grow in. Land that was once left empty because of poor growth capabilities was planted in the lucrative crop of cotton. Growing cotton allowed farmers to grow crops in fields that previously had to rest for a season. The southern farmers were able to realize a profit thanks to Eli’s labor and time saving machine.
With the increase in cotton production, came the increase in slave labor, which was used to harvest the cotton crop, making each slave an increasingly valuable asset. Westward migration was also seen as cotton spread throughout western land like a wildfire. Almost immediately, cotton was transformed into a major export. ?Cotton exports averaged about $9 million annually from 1803 to 1807, about 22 percent of the value of all exports, from 1815 to 1819, they averaged over $23 million, or 39 percent of the total, and from the mid-1830s to 1860, they accounted for more than half the value of all exports in the nation.? (Tindall and Shi, 418)