The Road to Secession

The Road to Secession

Now that Texas was full of immigrants from the Southern United States it s time to learn about the differences facing the two sides. The year is 1860 The lives of people living the the North were very different than that of people living in the South

LIFE IN THE NORTH Industrial economy Growth of cities Railroads increased commerce Yankee clippers increased foreign trade New machines helped produce more goods Wave of immigrants supplied labor Larger Population

LIFE IN THE NORTH Industrial Economy

Growth of Cities According to the map, where are the cities with a population of more than 250,000 located? The cities with 50,000-250,000?

Railroads and Increased Commerce

Yankee Clippers Increased Foreign Trade

New machines helped produce more goods Bates Mill workers in the late 19th century in Maine. The cotton fiber is sent through "combers" and other machinery that gradually reduces it in size until the desired thread thickness is reached. Photography courtesy of the Lewiston Public Library.

Wave of immigrants supplied labor

LIFE IN THE SOUTH Agricultural economy Few large cities Limited industry & transportation Cottonocracy & King Cotton Invention of the cotton gin increased planters profits African Americans enslaved Plantation System Smaller Population

Agricultural Economy

Few large cities

Limited industry & transportation

Cottonocracy & King Cotton 1836-1840 $321 million 43% of total U.S. exports 1856-1860 $744.6 million 54% of total U.S. exports Cotton Diplomacy In The Civil War Almost unanimously, Southerners believed they could use cotton to lure England and France into recognizing the Confederacy. Since the administration of Jefferson Davis wanted to avoid any appearance of international "blackmail," the Confederate Congress never formally approved an embargo, but state governments and private citizens voluntarily withheld the crop from the market in hopes of causing a "cotton famine" overseas. Theoretically, widespread shortages would shut down European mills, forcing governments to recognize and perhaps come to the military aid of the Confederacy, or to declare the Union blockade ineffective and disregard or break it in order to reopen Southern ports. The "King Cotton" mentality was seriously flawed, not the least in overestimating the value of "white gold." First, a bumper crop in 1860 had glutted the marketplace, lowering prices and allowing mill owners to stockpile. Cotton prices did rise sharply late in 1861, but workers, not owners, suffered from the effects of unemployment. Producers, drawing from their reserves, did not feel the pinch until late in 1862, and within a year imports from India, Egypt, and Brazil sufficiently replaced Southern cotton. Second, Davis, never an astute diplomat, failed to recognize how much Europe feared the possibility of war with the U.S. Private European citizens and industrialists invested in speculative ventures tenuously backed by Southern cotton securities, but their governments would not antagonize the North by recognizing the Confederacy for the sake of guaranteeing those investments or increasing supplies of the staple. Further, Southern society tied cotton inseparably to slavery, and England, the example Napoleon Ill would follow, led the abolitionist movement in the world community. Europe's wait-and-see attitude hardened into unassailable neutrality after the Southern armies suffered reverses beginning at Gettysburg, and Davis and his supporters realized the cotton strategy had failed as a diplomatic tool. They had unwisely hoarded their one great asset and undermined their best chance of financing the war.

Invention of the Cotton Gin Increased Planter s Profits Before cotton can be spun into yarn or thread and woven into cloth, the fibers must be separated from their seeds. In 1793 Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin, a shortened term for "cotton engine." Whitney's patented machine featured a wooden cylinder with iron teeth or spikes, a grooved breastwork of brass or iron through which the spikes could pass but the seeds could not, and a brush cylinder behind the breastwork to clear cotton fibers from the spikes. Ginned seed cotton, or lint, was carried in baskets or allowed to fall into a lint room for storage. The lint was then packed by foot or wooden pestle into a sack and taken to market. H. Ogden Holmes, a South Carolina mechanic, received a patent in 1796 for improvements to the cotton gin that included saw disks passing between flat metal ribs and continuous emptying of the roll box, ginning principles in use today. The cotton gin enabled a worker who had formerly cleaned five pounds of cotton a day by hand to "gin" fifty pounds of cotton a day. The success of the cotton gin led to increased production of short-staple cotton throughout the South.

This diagram shows how the cotton gin worked. Hooks on the cylinder removed the seeds from the cotton. Did the cotton go through the brushes before or after the seeds were removed?

African Americans enslaved

Plantation System

Draw a Venn Diagram in your notebook and do the following: Life in the North Life in the South In Common?