The Cotton Gin and Its Impacts on Southern Economic Growth and Slavery
Slavery on Cotton Plantations
As the world's need for textiles increased, southern states took measures to quicken the process of cultivating the land and harvesting the cotton. These measures included bringing in more and more slaves to work the fields. The slave population rose to four million at the beginning of the Civil War from only just over one million in 1810.
The Process of Cotton Farming
Originally, the separation of the seeds from the cotton plant had to be done manually, and this process was long and strenuous. Without new technologies, cotton farming was not as lucrative as other industries.
The Cotton Gin in Action
Eli Whitney
The Shrimp Girl is a painting by the English artist William Hogarth. It was painted around 1740–45, and is held by the National Gallery, London. [more]
Textile Factories Flourished with Increased Cotton Production
Mr and Mrs Andrews is an oil on canvas portrait of about 1750 by Thomas Gainsborough, now in the National Gallery, London. [more]
The Number of Slaves Increased Drastically
Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) is an oil painting by English artist John Constable, painted in 1816. It is Constable's largest exhibition canvas to be painted mainly outdoors, the first of his large "six-foot" paintings [more]
The Fighting Temeraire
The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil painting by the English artist J. M. W. Turner. HMS Temeraire was one of the last second-rate ships of the line to have played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. [more]
Liberty Leading the People
Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. [more]
Ophelia
Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed between 1851 and 1852. It depicts Ophelia, a character from Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark. [more]
The Music Lesson
The Music Lesson or Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman by Jan Vermeer, is a painting of young female pupil receiving the titular music lesson. [more]
