Process Paper

          To choose our topic we made a list from the textbook of revolutionary ideas, events, and inventions. We decided to do a machine because we wanted to see how a small, simple invention could influence a large society. We picked the cotton gin. After doing research of different mediums we saw a clear revolution, and complex reactions and reform.

          We found a variety of books at Bedford, Billerica, Cambridge, and Waltham Libraries. The author of one Northern newspaper article is pro-slavery in this specific case, because of cotton's positive effect on the northern economy. This shows that the North is not against slave labor in all cases and that the North image of being anti-slavery is a generalization. The author wrote about Eli Whitney as a “genius” and although the cotton gin brought along “profitable slave labor,” slavery is not something we should abolish. Another old newspaper we discovered came from after the Civil War reflecting on how the cotton gin was one of the causes of the revitalization of slave labor. One good scholarly journal illustrated the relationship between increasing production of cotton in the South and industrialization in the North. Another primary source was a speech to the Senate by James Henry Hammond. He had a bias in the sense that he was a Southern slave holder, but he talks about one of the reactions towards the new cotton industry. Although he does not specifically talk about the cotton gin, one can infer that the reason “cotton is king” is because of the cotton gin. Another resource we found helpful was Complicity, which focused on the Northern perspective, rather than the Southern. It gave a sample different than what we previously had thought. New York City was thinking of seceding from the Union because leaving the South would mean no economical benefit from cotton. One book that we found useful was “The Story of the Cotton Gin”. It was an article written for The New England Magazine from the 1890. The author explains how the cotton gin was one of the causes of the civil war. Bates wrote about how people compromised their morals to make a profit off of cotton. 

          Numbers are sometimes hard to register, so our website has many visual images, as well as maps and a graph.  Images of the cotton gin and the labor was easy to find on Google. 
The focus of our research will now be how the cotton gin influenced the increase in slave labor and the reaction that receives from the North. The cotton gin is revolutionary because it changed the way cotton was produced. The cotton gin has metal teeth that are just close enough to stop all the seeds from passing as the cotton is pulled through the machine. It made it possible for farmers to grow short staple cotton and clean it all. This meant that more slaves were needed to work in the field to produce the cotton. Opposition to this increase in slavery was Northerners disliked the use of slavery in production. They indirectly depended on cotton for their economy, but that would involve compromising their values and allowing slavery to continue. Slavery was eventually abolished, causing the cotton prices to go up. The South now had to pay workers, and the reformed system was the sharecropping and tenant farming. The revolutionary invention of a speedier de-seeding process created a rise in slave labor, leading to the new systems of sharecropping and tenant farming.