North and South Part 3

Rise of the Cotton Kingdom

HOW WERE THE ECONOMIES OF THE SOUTH AND NORTH DIFFERENT?
• In the early years of the United States, the South had an economy based

almost entirely on farming, despite the fact that settlers had developed
only a small part of the region.
• Most Southerners lived in the Upper South, an area along the Atlantic coast in

Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

• A few people had also settled in Georgia and South Carolina.

• By 1850, the South had changed.

• Its population had spread inland to the Deep South.

• This region included Georgia and South Carolina, as well as Alabama, Mississippi,

Louisiana, and Texas.

• The economy of the South was thriving.

• The economy depended, however, on slavery.

• Slavery grew stronger than ever in the South, while it all but disappeared in the North.

Rise of the Cotton Kingdom
• Cotton Is King

• Southern planters grew mainly rice, indigo, and tobacco in colonial times.

• After the American Revolution, demand for these crops decreased, while European

mills not wanted Southern cotton.

• Raising a cotton crop took a large amount of time and labor.

• After the harvest, workers had to carefully separate the plant’s sticky seeds from the

cotton fibers.

• Eli Whitney solved this problem with his invention of the cotton gin in 1793.

• Whitney’s gin quickly and easily removed seeds from the cotton fibers.

• With a cotton gin, productivity, which is a measure of how much a worker can produce with

a given amount of time and effort, shot up.
•The cotton gin helped workers process 50 times more cotton each day than they could by hand.

• The use of the cotton gin had important consequences.

• It encouraged farmers to grow more cotton in more places.

• Because Southern planters relied on enslaved workers to plant and pick their cotton, the

demand for slave labor increased.

• By 1860, the Deep South and Upper South remained agricultural, but each

region concentrated on different crops.

• The Upper South: Grew tobacco, hemp, wheat, and vegetables.
• The Deep South: Grew cotton, rice, and sugarcane.

Rise of the Cotton Kingdom

• Cotton Is King cont.

• Because more workers were needed to produce cotton and sugar, the sale of

enslaved Africans became a big business.

• The Upper South became a center for the sale and transport of enslaved people.
• This trade became known as the domestic slave trade, which is the trade of enslaved

people among the different states in the United States.

Southern Industry

WHY DID INDUSTRY DEVELOP SLOWLY IN THE SOUTH?
• Industry developed more slowly in the South than in the North.

• One reason was the boom in cotton.

• Agriculture, especially cotton farming, produced great profits.

• Due to the costs of building a new industry, Planters would have had to sell enslaved people

or land to raise the money to build factories
•They chose to invest in profitable agriculture, which included enslaved Africans.

• This process took a lot of time to set, resulting in a delay in their profits.

• Second reason was the market for manufactures goods in the South was small.

• Enslaved people, who made up a large share of the population, had no money to buy

goods.

• Because of this, it discouraged industries from developing there.

• For these reasons, many Southerners did not want industry.

Southern Industry

• Factories in the South

• Some Southern leaders wanted to develop industry in the region.

• They thought that the South depended too much on the North for manufactured

goods.

• The leaders argued that factories would improve the economy in the Upper South.

• William Gregg, of South Carolina, shared this view.

• He opened his own textile factory.

• Augustin Clayton, of Georgia, also went into textiles by opening a cotton mill.
• Joseph Reid Anderson, of Virginia, made Tredegar Iron Works, which was one

of the nation’s leading iron producers.

• The Alabama Iron Works also included a sawmill for producing lumber.

• These industries, however, were not typical in the South.

Southern Industry

• Southern Transportation

• In general, farmers and the few manufacturers of the South relied on natural

waterways to transport their goods.

• Most towns were located on coasts or along rivers because canals were scarce and

roads were poor.

• Southern rail lines were short, local, and not linked together.

• The South had fewer railroads than the North.

• This caused Southern cities to grow more slowly than Northern cities, where railways were

major routes of commerce and settlements.

• The rail networks in the North also gave Northern manufacturers an advantage over

their Southern competitors.
• Lower shipping costs allowed Northerners to charge less for their goods.

• By 1860, only about 1/3rdof the nation’s rail lines lay within the South.

• This rail shortage would hurt the South in the years to come.