3/14【历史上的今天】轧棉机的发明和蓄奴制的联系，你一定要知道

美国历史上的今天

Cotton Gin

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为AP历史拿5分打下坚实基础

When: March 14, 1794

What: Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.

Why significant: Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds. With Eli Whitney’s gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South.

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the U.S., concentrated mostly in the South. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy. The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production. By 1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market. The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse".

Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.

Tags: Civil War, slavery, cotton gin