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Captive Passage
has been made
possible in part by:
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Cotton Plantations:
A large number of early settlers in America grew cotton. To grow cotton and to pick, gin (remove the seeds from the white fluff), and bale it took a great deal of work. Large numbers of slaves were purchased to do this work.
The industry was given a boost with the invention of Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin in 1793. With the aid of a horse to turn the gin, a man could clean fifty times as much cotton as before. This increased the demand for slave labor rather than decreasing it. In 1803 alone, over 20,000 slaves were being brought into Georgia and South Carolina to work in the cotton fields.
Much of this cotton was exported to Britain where the invention of the Spinning Jenny, the Water Frame, and the Power Loom had rapidly increased the demand for raw cotton. By 1850, America was producing 3,000,000 bales of cotton, and the industry had become a vital element of the South's economy.
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