The Slavers : 225 



in England on a small scale as a home industry and attempts had 

 been made to raise and manufacture cotton in the American colo- 

 nies, but up to the close of the eighteenth century, the total produc- 

 tion and use of cotton i^ad been small owing to the difficulty of sepa- 

 rating the seeds from the fiber by hand process and the further diffi- 

 culty of producing the thread by hand-spinning methods. 



In the closino^ decades of the century the introduction of power 

 machinery in England for the weaving and spinning of cotton gave 

 a great impetus to the industry and an enormously increased demand 

 for the raw material. At the same time the southern colonies in 

 America needed a new cash crop as a substitute for or supplement 

 to tobacco. Thus, they turned to cotton but found a great handicap 

 in the difficulty of ginning or cleaning the fiber from the seed. 



So-called "Sea-Island" cotton was introduced from the Bahamas 

 in 1786 and did well in the Atlantic lowlands. It partly met the situ- 

 ation because it had a long staple and was easier to clean and handle. 

 Production of long-staple cotton was restricted to the seacoast. Whit- 

 ney's machine made the use of short-staple cotton, which would 

 grow in the interior, economically profitable. Even in its early crude 

 forms, one of Whitney's machines operated by water power or by a 

 horse could perform the same work that formerly required fifty men. 

 Within a few years cotton became the greatest commercial crop of 

 the south and the greatest single export of the United States. Begin- 

 ning in Georgia and South Carolina, cotton culture spread into 

 North Carolina and Virginia, then it began a westward march cross- 

 ing the mountains into Tennessee. By 1850 Alabama had supplanted 

 Georgia as the leading cotton state and a decade later it was Missis- 

 sippi, Alabama and Louisiana that raised over half of the total crop. 

 Cotton, of course, was the ideal crop for slave labor and the devel- 

 opment of the cotton industry changed the whole social attitude in 

 the South toward the institution of slavery. The number of slaves in 

 1790 was about 1,700,000 and by i860 it had increased to around 

 4,000,000. At the time the cotton gin was introduced the average 

 price for an able-bodied slave was about $300. Before twenty years 

 ran out this price had doubled; by 1830 the price was $800; by 1850, 

 $1,200, and in i860 the prices ranged from $1,400 to $2,000. 



In 1807 the British government, by decree, abolished slavery in its 

 colonies and possessions and also moved against the slave trade on 

 the high seas, but enforcement was lax. In 1808 the United States 

 made it illegal to import slaves into its territories, but this provision 

 was also commonly evaded. Wilberforce, the English abolitionist, led 



