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How Did Eli Whitney Impact The Invention Of The Cotton Gin

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American society was hugely impacted by Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin because it changed the way cotton was separated, in turned made cotton production easier and made cotton plantations spread across the South. This increased the need for slavery and caused a bigger wedge between the North and the South.
In the South, during the late 1700’s, tobacco became a less lucrative crop, and it also laid waste to the land robbing it of nutrients. Other crops of the period, hardly made any profit for the southern plantation owners. It was then believed that the slave was no longer earning enough for the landowner to pay for the upkeep and the end to slavery may have been near until a little invention changed all that. The cotton gin was …show more content…

There was a need to separate the seed from the cotton boll, to make growing cotton in the South more cost-effective. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin changed the way cotton fiber was separated from the seed. It was no longer separated by hand, which was commonly done by slaves. The crop of cotton was easy to grow, but time-consuming to separate. It would take 10 hours to separate 3 pounds of cotton from the small seed inside the bolls. The invention of the cotton gin changed one day's work of seeding into one hour. This innovation meant that cotton could be separated easier and quicker. Eli Whitney’s idea of the cotton gin was that it could be hand cranked by a person, powered by horses or water. Whitney quoted in the article Teaching With Documents: Eli Whitney’s Patent for the Cotton Gin, in a letter to his father, “One man and a horse will do more than fifty …show more content…

A direct effect of the cotton gin was the need for more slaves to pick cotton since it was so easy to separate, they now could work in volume. Consequently, more cotton crops caused more demand for cheap labor and the role of slaves. Even though, the invention of the cotton gin decreased the amount of labor, that was needed to separate the cotton from the seed, the caused an increase in the cotton crops across the South. This provided a need for more slaves to pick those crops. After the Proclamation of 1763 had been nullified, the land west of the Appalachians began to be settled as well as the land from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The new, rich land began to be worked for the new cash crop of cotton as well as the increased demand for slaves to cultivate the soil and pick the cotton. From 1790 to 1808 the South brought in 80,000 more slaves before the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves outlined in the Constitution came into effect January 1, 1808. One-third of the southern population, after the cotton boom, were slaves.Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State at that time, wrote in a letter to Eli Whitney, “As to the State of Virginia, of which I am, carries on household manufactures of cotton to a great extent, as I also do myself, and one of our great embarrassment is the cleaning the cotton of the seeds, I feel a considerable interest in the success of your invention

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