In 1793 slavery seemed a dying institution, North and South.
Conditions of soil and climate made slavery unprofitable in the
North. On many of the indigo, rice, and tobacco plantations in
the South there were more slaves than could be profitably
employed, and many planters were thinking of emancipating their
slaves, when along came this simple but wonderful machine and
with it the vision of great riches in cotton; for while slaves
could not earn their keep separating the cotton from its seeds by
hand, they could earn enormous profits in the fields, once the
difficulty of extracting the seeds was solved. Slaves were no
longer a liability but an asset. The price of "field hands" rose,
and continued to rise. If the worn-out lands of the seaboard no
longer afforded opportunity for profitable employment, the rich
new lands of the Southwest called for laborers, and yet more
laborers. Taking slaves with them, younger sons pushed out into
the wilderness, became possessed of great tracts of fertile land,
and built up larger plantations than those upon which they had
been born. Cotton became King of the South.
The supposed economic necessity of slave labor led great men to
defend slavery, and politics in the South became largely the
defense of slavery against the aggression, real or fancied, of
the free North.
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