In the early history of the United States, southern farms produced a diverse number of crops. Tobacco, sugar, cotton, and rice were all leading
exports from southern growers. In the early nineteenth century, however,
several factors made cotton the crop of choice for growers.
In the late 1700s, new production methods made making cotton
cloth much easier and faster. As a result, there was a greater demand for
cotton, particularly in England where there were many factories. Though
cotton grew well in the southern United States, growers could not meet
the growing demand for cotton. Most of this was due to difficulties presented by the two different types of cotton that grew well in the South.
Cotton fibers sprout from cotton seeds much like the hair on a person’s head. The black-seeded variety has fibers that are easily cleaned
from the seeds. This variety, however, only grew along the coastal regions
of the South. The green-seeded variety could be grown inland throughout the region, but the fibers were very difficult to remove from the seed.
As a result, cotton was only raised as a business crop where the black-seed
variety could be grown.
In 1793, American inventor Eli Whitney (1765–1825) was visiting
a friend’s plantation in Georgia. When he learned of the difficulty with
harvesting green-seed cotton, he worked to create a machine to make the
process easier. Within only days, he had a model for his cotton gin. It
was perfected within a few months, and Whitney obtained a patent for
the cotton gin in 1794.
The gin enabled cotton, then in high demand, to be grown as a lucrative business throughout the South. Production rose impressively after
the invention, and cotton became the leading domestic export. In 1790,
only four thousand bales of cotton were exported from the United States.
By 1860, the South exported over four million bales, more than 60 percent of the world supply.
The boom in cotton boosted the national economy. Financing cotton businesses and transporting cotton stimulated northern banking and
transportation industries. Increased southern wealth created a demand
for northern manufactured goods and midwestern farm produce. The
economic influence of the crop was so vast that many southern politicians and plantation owners referred to it as King Cotton.
The largest immediate downside to the cotton boom was the impact
it had on prolonging slavery. Cotton crops needed to be tended aroundthe-clock, and the large fields required many laborers. So while northern
states were banning slavery in the wake of the United States’s freedom
from Great Britain, white southerners held tightly to the institution for
their financial well-being.
With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a major force
in the rapid economic development of the United States. The young nation gained a substantial global role when the crop became so easily prepared. The crop continued to dominate the economy throughout the
South until the twentieth century. With the challenges of the Great
Depression (1929–41) and World War II (1939–45), crop diversification and industrialization became necessary.