A HISTORY SHORT
Why Eli Whitney and King Cotton are part of the American Legacy
Understanding how cotton was once the economic backbone of the American South.
It started with Eli Whitney.
Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8th, 1765. Whitney is best known for inventing the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of America’s Industrial Revolution.
Eli Whitney’s invention helped to shape the economy of the South, turning cotton into a profitable crop and strengthening the economic foundation of slavery.
If you know anything about cotton, you know that it has a lot of seeds in and around the boll. Even with the benefit of free labor from the slaves, cotton was not a profitable crop for the plantation owners of the American South because it still required too much labor to separate the seeds from the cotton.
In 1794, Whitney changed the economic calculus of cotton production when he patented the cotton gin. Whitney’s invention, Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy and the subsequent cheap available land…
