USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Overview. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the cash crop of the Deep South, stimulating increased demand for enslaved people from the Upper South to toil the land.

Detailed explanation-2: -The crop grown in the South was a hybrid: Gossypium barbadense, known as Petit Gulf cotton, a mix of Mexican, Georgia, and Siamese strains. Petit Gulf cotton grew extremely well in different soils and climates.

Detailed explanation-3: -By 1800 cotton was king. The Deep South in the United States supplied most of the world’s cotton-in booming British factories, it was spun into fabric then sold around the empire. Farmers across the region were producing larger harvests than ever before thanks to the cotton gin, and more cotton required more labor.

Detailed explanation-4: -Cotton, however, emerged as the antebellum South’s major commercial crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance.

Detailed explanation-5: -Eli Whitney’s mechanical cotton gin revolutionized cotton production and expanded and strengthened slavery throughout the South.