What Role Did the First Families of Virginia Play in Southern Politics? Brainly

With cash crops of tobacco, cotton fiber and sugar cane, America's southern states became the economic engine of the burgeoning nation. Their fuel of pick? Human slavery.

If the Confederacy had been a split up nation, information technology would have ranked as the fourth richest in the world at the start of the Civil War. The slave economy had been very good to American prosperity. Past the start of the state of war, the South was producing 75 percent of the world'due south cotton and creating more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. Enslaved workers represented Southern planters' most pregnant investment—and the majority of their wealth.

Enslaved workers leaving the fields with baskets of cotton. (Credit: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

An Economy Built on Slavery

Building a commercial enterprise out of the wilderness required labor and lots of it. For much of the 1600s, the American colonies operated as agricultural economies, driven largely by indentured servitude. Almost workers were poor, unemployed laborers from Europe who, like others, had traveled to N America for a new life. In commutation for their work, they received nutrient and shelter, a rudimentary education and sometimes a merchandise.

By 1680, the British economy improved and more jobs became available in Britain. During this time, slavery had go a morally, legally and socially acceptable institution in the colonies. As the number of European laborers coming to the colonies dwindled, enslaving Africans became a commercial necessity—and more widely acceptable.

With ideal climate and available land, belongings owners in the southern colonies began establishing plantation farms for cash crops similar rice, tobacco and sugar pikestaff—enterprises that required increasing amounts of labor. To meet the demand, wealthy planters turned to traders, who imported ever more human being chattel to the colonies, the vast bulk from West Africa. As more enslaved Africans were imported and an upsurge in fertility rates expanded the "inventory," a new industry was born: the slave auction. These open markets where humans were inspected like animals and bought and sold to the highest bidder proved an increasingly lucrative enterprise. By the mid-19th century, a skilled, able-bodied enslaved person could fetch upwards to $2,000, although prices varied by the state.

Slave auction circa 1861. (Credit: API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images)

Economical Necessity Trumps Morality

Slave labor had become so entrenched in the Southern economy that null—non even the conventionalities that all men were created equal—would dislodge information technology. When delegates to the Ramble Convention met in Philadelphia in the summertime of 1787, they were dissever on the moral question of human bondage and human being's inhumanity to human being, but not on its economic necessity. At the time, there were well-nigh 700,000 enslaved people living in the United States, worth many millions in today's dollars.

When the topic of slavery arose during the deliberations over calculating political representation in Congress, the southern states of Georgia and the Carolinas demanded that each enslaved person be counted along with whites. The northern states balked, saying it gave southern states an unfair reward. Their compromise? Delegates agreed that each enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person, giving the S more representation, and that the slave merchandise would be banned 20 years hence, in 1807, a concession to Northern states that had abolished slavery several years before.

VIDEO: The System of American Slavery – Historians and experts examine the American organisation of racialized slavery and the hypocrisy it relied on to part.

Before the American Revolution, tobacco was the colonies' main cash crop, with exports of the effluvious leaf increasing from 60,000 pounds in 1622 to 1.five meg by 1639. Past the finish of the century, Uk was importing more than than 20 million pounds of tobacco per year. Merely later on the colonies won independence, Britain no longer favored American products and considered tobacco a competitor to crops produced elsewhere in the empire. Always a fickle commodity for growers, tobacco was beset by price fluctuations, weakness to weather changes and an exhausting of the soil's nutrients. But even as tobacco waned in importance, another cash ingather showed promise: cotton.

Slaves on an American plantation operating a cotton fiber gin. (Credit: MPI/Getty Images)

King Cotton

Picking and cleaning cotton involved a labor-intensive process that slowed production and limited supply. In 1794, inventor Eli Whitney devised a machine that combed the cotton wool bolls free of their seeds in very short order. Manually, one enslaved person could selection the seeds out of 10 pounds of cotton in a day. The cotton gin, which Whitney patented in 1794, could procedure 100 pounds in the same fourth dimension.

There was an irony in all this. Many people believed the cotton gin would reduce the need for enslaved people considering the machine could supervene upon human being labor. Merely in reality, the increased processing capacity accelerated demand. The more cotton processed, the more that could be exported to the mills of Keen Britain and New England. And the invention of the cotton gin coincided with other developments that opened up large-calibration global trade: Cargo ships were built bigger, improve and easier to navigate. Powerful navies protected them against piracy. And newly invented steam engines powered these ships, likewise as looms and weaving machines, which increased the chapters to produce cotton fiber material.

With all these factors amping upwardly production and distribution, the Due south was poised to expand its cotton-based economic system. With more than state needed for cultivation, the number of plantations expanded in the South and moved west into new territory. Production exploded: Betwixt 1801 and 1835 alone, the U.S. cotton exports grew from 100,000 bales to more than a million, comprising half of all U.Southward. exports. The issue: Every bit cotton became the backbone of the Southern economy, slavery drove impressive profits.

The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South. In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while the fiscal and shipping industries also saw gains. Banks in New York and London provided capital to new and expanding plantations for purchasing both state and enslaved workers. Every bit a result, enslaved people became a legal form of property that could be used equally collateral in business transactions or to pay off outstanding debt. Enslaved people comprised a sizable portion of a planter's property holdings, condign a source of tax acquirement for state and local governments. A sort of sales tax was as well levied on enslaved worker transactions.

Steadily, a near-feudal order emerged in the South. At the top was the aristocratic landowning elite, who wielded much of the economic and political power. Their plantations spanned upwards of a m acres, controlling hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of enslaved people. A culture of gentility and loftier-minded codes of honor emerged.

Below the aristocracy class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people. These farmers were self-made and fiercely independent. Small farmers without enslaved workers and landless whites were at the bottom, making up 3-quarters of the white population—and dreaming of the day when they, too, might own enslaved people.

No affair how broad the gap betwixt rich and poor, class tensions among whites were eased past the belief they all belonged to the "superior race." Many convinced themselves they were actually doing God'southward piece of work taking care of what they believed was an inferior people.

Enslaved people returning from the cotton fields in South Carolina, circa 1860. (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images)

Slavery, Wealth and the Confederacy

Past the start of the 19th century, slavery and cotton fiber had become essential to the continued growth of America's economic system. All the same, past 1820, political and economical force per unit area on the South placed a wedge between the North and South. The Abolitionist movement, which called for an emptying of the establishment of slavery, gained influence in Congress. Tariff taxes were passed to aid Northern businesses fend off foreign competition but hurt Southern consumers. By the 1850s, many Southerners believed a peaceful secession from the Union was the just path forward.

When because leaving the Marriage, Southerners knew the North had an overwhelming advantage over the Due south in population, industrial output and wealth. Yet, the booming cotton economy most Southerners were optimistic about their future. As i state after another left the Union in 1860 and 1861, many Southerners believed they were doing the right matter to preserve their independence and their property.

To enhance funds, Confederate leaders sold bonds for gold money, which was in circulation at the time. The Confederate currency was inherently weak and became weaker with each printing. In time, the paper coin lost 90 percent of its ownership power. What golden and silver existed, was taken out of circulation and hoarded by the regime and private citizens.

What Happened to the Gold?

By war's stop, the Confederacy had petty usable capital to continue the fight. In the conflict's waning days, it is believed that Confederate officials stashed away millions of dollars' worth of gilded, most in Richmond, Virginia. As the Spousal relationship Army entered the Confederate upper-case letter in 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and millions of dollars of gold escaped to Georgia. What happened after that is disputed, the field of study of many myths and legends.

Spotter: Confederate Gold on HISTORY Vault

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy

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