1. 16.3 The Cotton Kingdom pp

2. Objectives: Note how the North and the South differed before 1860.
Examine the effect the cotton gin had on the lives of Southerners.

3. A. The Southern Economy (p. 521)
Between 1820 and 1860, the North became increasingly urban and industrialized.
Meanwhile, the South remained largely agricultural with few large cities.
As a result, the South had to purchase most of its manufactured goods from the North.

4. B. Southern Conservatism (pp. 521-522)
While Northerners bragged about their go-ahead spirit, Southerners prided themselves on their love of tradition.
Southerners scorned manufacturing and trading, and placed a premium on growing sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
As a result, few urban areas developed in the South; only New Orleans, with 150,000 people, compared to Northern cities in size.

5. C. Southern Manufacturing (pp. 522-523)
Before 1860 many Southerners still produced much of their cloth and clothing at home with spinning wheels and hand looms.
The yeomanry, or families on small Southern farms, contrasted dramatically with plantation owners, who wore factory-made cloth from England and, increasingly, the North.
By the 1850s, almost everything Southerners purchased—clothing, manufactured goods, saddles, books, etc.—came from the North.

6. D. The Cotton Gin (pp )
Although European mills wanted Southern cotton, growing it was impractical because it took a worker a full day to remove the seeds from just one pound of cotton.
In 1793, while visiting a plantation in Georgia, a Yale graduate named Eli Whitney was asked to build a device for removing seeds from cotton pods.
Whitney developed a revolving cylinder with wire teeth called the cotton gin, “gin” being short for engine.

7. E. Cotton is King (p. 524)
A worker using a cotton gin could process 50 pounds of cotton, rather than 1 pound, per day; a water-powered gin could produce a thousand pounds per day.
Within ten years cotton became king because it was the South’s biggest cash crop and the chief export of the United States.
The factories created the demand for cotton and the cotton gin allowed the South to meet that demand.

8. F. Slavery Revived (pp. 524-525)
The invention of the cotton gin caused the demand for slave labor to increase dramatically.
The demand for slave labor outstripped supply and the cost of slaves skyrocketed.
Southern plantation owners had no intention of freeing what they considered their most valuable pieces of property.

9. Review: Contrast the Northern and Southern economies.
Who invented the cotton gin?
What cash crop became king in the South?
What impact did the cotton gin have on African American slavery in the South?