Day(s) 7: 3/14/1794 and 6/14/1798

My dear GNABB readers, I know it has been awhile since the last installment of my 31 Days list. Due to the unprecedented excitement and response, I decided that I needed to let things cool down for awhile before hitting you with another thrilling episode. I count this as one entry, although I have two dates, four years apart, listed here. But they are related. Since it has been awhile, a review of what has come before:

* Intro and Getting By the Obvious
(Yes, I know it says 30. Changed it to 31).
* Day 1: 7/28/1588
* Day 2: 3/4/1628
* Day 3: 2/10/1763
* Day 4: 8/29/1786
* Day 5: 9/11/1789
* Day 6: 9/17/1796

Now to the newest entry...

What Happened:

You can blame the country being torn apart at its very foundation, the continued enslavement of African Americans after slavery had disappeared from the rest of the Western world, and the slaughter of over 700,000 Americans on one man. He didn't mean to cause so much trouble. He was just a creative inventor and entrepreneur. His name was Eli Whitney.

ABOVE: Eli Whitney. Inventor. Entepreneur. Key cause of the American Civil War.

Slavery had been in the Americas ever since the Europeans arrived. It flourished in the Southern regions of North America mainly due to the type of crops that were grown there. Sugar in the Caribbean, rice, indigo...and cotton. Cotton was labor intensive, though. It took a man all day to get one pound worth of cotton, as he had to painstakingly separate the seeds from the fiber by hand. Slavery had been banned in most of Europe by the early 1800's, and it was on the decline in the United States as well. Most predicted, including our Founders who had owned slaves themselves, such as Washington and Jefferson, that slavery would die a slow and natural death in the U.S. as well. But on March 14, 1794, inventor Eli Whitney was granted a patent on the cotton gin, pictured BELOW:

Now, one man churning a cotton gin, could produce 50 times as much cotton in a day as before. This changed everything. The gin separated the fiber from the seeds, and the seeds could then be replanted for more cotton.

Whitney also popularized in the U.S. (although he did not invent) the idea of interchangeable parts for muskets. On June 14, 1798, Whitney signed a contract with the United States Treasury Department as a manufacturer of firearms. Now rifles could be mass produced.

Why It Is Important:

You might ask, as my students do when we cover this period, with the cotton gin, then wouldn't you need fewer slaves? No. Now that cotton could be produced in much larger quantities relatively cheaply, the cotton industry exploded. Hundreds of thousands more acres were planted, and the South became a monopolistic economy, all cotton all the time. Slaves were needed to plant the cotton and pick the cotton. Cotton, and therefore slavery, became the backbone of the region and an integral part of everyday life. It was the key to the wealth of the planter aristocracy. There were more millionaires per capita in Natchez, Mississippi than anywhere else in the world. One landowner there owned a plantation that was the equivalent size of five Manhattans. So whereas slavery was on the decline in the South before the cotton gin, the trend was reversed and slaves were in more demand than ever. The Constitution had specifically banned the importation of slaves after 1808, but many slaves were still smuggled in to the country. Also, natural reproduction (some forced) increased the slave population as well.

Cotton can be a harsh crop on soil, and so there was an ever increasing demand for more land for cotton production. This coincided with our biggest push West. The Civil War was as much about slavery as it was about regional power struggles. But it was not just about North vs. South power. It was about North vs. South vs. West. Would this new western territory (Lousiana Purchase in 1803, Mexican Cession in 1848) be slave territory or would it be free? The South had already lost the battle for the House of Representatives (due to the North's larger population), but there was a fierce fight to maintain a balance at least in the Senate. The new states carved out of this Western territory, being flooded by new settlers spurred by manifest destiny and many push/pull factors, would be key in the power struggle. Such milestones as the Missouri Compromise, The Mexican War, the California Goldrush, popular sovereignty in the Kansas territory, The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, The Great Compromise of 1850...all were caused by or played a part in the regional power struggle, based on slave vs. free.

By the Civil War, the Southern United States was the largest cotton producer in the world. Cotton was in high demand, especially in Europe, due to the textiles boom. And the North's hands were dirty too. Northern textile mills were just as dependent on Southern cotton as Europe. Northern banks loaned money to Southern landowners. Since the South was only concentrating on cotton, Northern merchants sold to Southern customers all of the other necessities. Southern cotton wasn't just key to the South's economy, it was the fuel of the American economy as well in the first half of the 19th century.

So Whitney's cotton gin was the impetus as to why the Civil War occurred. Whitney's interchangeable parts for muskets then provided the means of mass slaughter.