Slavery and a profitable cotton business came in hand in hand, without slaves the profits were small. As the cotton industry grow so did the slave population. This is shown by the fact that as the slave population increasing in 1790 from 700,000 to 4 million in 1860 cotton production went up to 4.5 million bales of cotton from only 3000. The cotton industry brought vast profits to the south and was a large contributor to the USA exports with 57% of all exports and without it the southern economy would have collapsed showing just how essential it was to the south. As well as bring in huge profits the cotton industry with the help of free labour form the slaves could now expand and it was profitable to expand in to the west to find new land to set up plantations.
The colonies first used indentured slaves on plantations, but they were much more expensive than slavery. Indentured slaves had their fare to America payed for as well as supplied with comfortable living conditions and in some cases, food. Slavery was introduced to America and it was a big hit. Slavery was almost free compared to indentured slaves, and with that money farmers were saving, they spent it on even more slaves and expanding their plantations. More plantations meant more crops being produced, which meant more profits that could be used to expand plantations.
In the early days of southern settlement, slaves were few, but were considered more efficient workers in the rice paddies than white indentured or hired laborers. Their African heritage gave the slaves better immunity than the white workers had, against the malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases that plagued the south’s tidewater area. Cotton initially was not a great cash crop, but the rise of the northern textile mills greatly increased the demand for cotton. The cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney also made cotton growing more profitable. This machine was operated by one person and could clean far more cotton in an hour than several workers could clean by hand.
It gave the people of the state the right to decide whether they wanted to legalize slavery or not. Because of this act many pro slavery and abolitionists rushed to the territory in an effort to establish their point of view. There were many conflicts that took place in battles between the two sides during this period. There were killings and fights and in one instance an anti slavery raid led to the killing of a man and his sons who had no slaves or no dealings with slaves. Popular sovereignty, the last remaining moderate solution to the controversy over the expansion of slavery, had failed dismally in Kansas (Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2005).
His biggest claim was his stating of, “More than anything else it was sugar that transformed the African slave trade.” The slave trade became an extremely profitable enterprise for European nations once the sugar plantations reached the New World. Many of the New World colonies sought to buy slaves to work on the sugar plantations. It wasn't until the last third of the seventeenth century were the English involved with the slave trade and since it was their royal colonies that were buying most of the slaves they saw a new opportunity to get more money from their colonies. Once the English started to get involved it caused most European nations to war over who dominated the slave trade since it was such a profitable enterprise. pg 38-39.
For slaves working on farms, the work was a little less tedious than tobacco cultivation, but no less demanding. Generally, slaves on plantations lived in complete family units, their work dictated by the rising and setting of the sun, and they generally had Sundays off. Plantation slaves were more likely to be sold or transferred than those in a domestic setting. They were also subject to brutal and severe punishments, because they were regarded as less valuable than household or urban slaves. Urban and household slaves generally did not live in complete family units.
After that they were sent to gold mines in the Southeast and then to the coffee plantations of the South. More Africans were brought due to the fact that the Native Americans were dying because they were overworked and exhausted. Slavery became a highly profitable system for white plantation owners in the Americas. Slaves showed many of the English settlers new products that they could grow like rice. Rice could be grown in the coastal environments.
On order to capitalise on this new process, the south needed lots of cheap labour, and found it in the form of slaves. As the Northern climate could not support the cotton plant, the Northern and Southern economy began to grow apart, until they were extremely different, with the Northern economy focussing on industrialisation, and the Southern economy remaining as an agricultural economy. This meant that they had different goals when it came to their economy, and that different things would benefit them. In particular, they clashed over import taxes
In the Southern colonies, the main source of economic growth was agriculture, specifically the planting and harvesting of tobacco, indigo, rice, and sugar cane, which were the staple crops of the region. These crops were often grown on very large plantations owned by wealthy white men, with little assistance to work the plantations. Not wanting to pay indentured servants for work, they often bought slaves to work the fields. This ended up saving them a lot of money, as they only had to pay for the initial purchase of the slave and, aside from the necessities of life, such as food and shelter, didn't need to invest anything more. The African slaves were also a lot more versatile than the indentured servants.
With the extra increase in slaves, they had the choice of using the extra labor force or selling slaves to other land owners. 13 As America began to grow, profits became the main drive for slavery. Europeans noticed that America was a goldmine, filled with sugar and cotton, thus causing many Europeans to move. In order to maximize profits, you needed labor. Slavery was the