King Cotton

During the Civil War, cotton drove the economy of the American South. It was picked by slaves on a cotton plantation owned by white plantation owners.

This is a picture of

a field of cotton being picked by African slaves.

This is a picture of slaves using a cotton gin. A cotton gin separate

the seed from the fluffy part of cotton. The invention of this machine made the growing of cotton very popular by plantation owners in the American South because it was easy to grow.

Cotton was a one-crop system, meaning the plantations didn't rotate what they planted. In the South during the war, a lot of the land was covered in cotton fields. Because it was a one-crop system, a lot of the nutrients in the soil were sucked out of the ground making it hard to grow anything else after it.

This picture shows Slaves in a cotton field being monitored by the plantation owner. The slaves were closely watched so they wouldn't run away.

In the 1800's many African-Americans were born into slavery and started a life of hard work at an early age. This picture is of two young boys, about ten, in a field picking cotton at a plantation in the American South. You can see how big the bag he is carrying is and how hard they must have been working. Can you imagine working such long hours all for someone else's benefit?
It was especially hard at such a young age.






The South was England and France's only supplier of cotton during the civil war, that's why the cotton industry was so big in the South. Cotton was known as "White Gold" because it was in such high demand when the Industrial Revolution introduced the textile mills to make clothing.





The Cotton Gin, short for Cotton Engine was invented by the young Eli Whitney as a way to sort the soft cotton from the sharp and thorny leaves surrounding it. It saved many hours and lots of slave labor because it was such a time saver. By this invention coming into use, production on cotton was quickened and easier to get a hold of.