The+Growth+of+Slavery+in+the+1800s

**Tobacco:** There were many reasons for the huge growth of slavery in the 1780s. One, being the growth of tobacco and the demand for workers to grow it. North American had the abundance for much tobacco, but they needed workers to grow it. John Rolfe, a wealthy British man was very fond of tobacco. When he came to America, he did an experiment and planted some seeds, seeing if he could make tobacco grow. Of course, it worked, and the tobacco industry took off. This crop required much intensive labor, tobacco needed to be planted, picked, cleaned, and cured in a long process which took months to complete. This crop also required a lot of people to work with it, so it seemed to them that, slaves were the answer. With the slaves working, tobacco went into a 30 year economic boom. The years of 1620 to 1650 were packed with the tobacco industry and having slaves working to grow it. Americans were amazed with this new crop that could be chewed, smoked in pipes, or snorted, then later in the 19th century, rolled into cigarettes and cigars.



**Cotton gin & Eli Whitney** Eli Whitney created the cotton gin in 1793 which made cotton less time consuming to produce. The cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates the cotton fibers from the seeds. Before the invention of the cotton gin people had to separate the cotton and the seeds by hand. There was a huge demand for cotton in England and the textile mills in the north. Although the cotton gin was capable of taking out the seeds, slaves were still needed to pick the cotton. The cotton gin was a tremendous impact to America because it expanded slavery.  //**__The Importance of Rice__**  Rice became an important crop in America during the 18th century. In the Carolinas it became farmer's main source of income and by the 19th century it became a significant crop in Virginia and Georgia. Rice was labour intensive and large numbers of slaves were purchased to do this labor. The slaves were also used for the construction of canals and ditches to maintain adequate supplies of water. According to an article on SCIway.net, "The Lives of African-American Slaves in Carolina in the 18th Century", it tells us that "The massive investment in slavery and land by the planters, the almost universal focus on rice and its particular labor requirements, even the planters' long summer absenteeism, all gave the low country plantations a special character. This slave-based agricultural system created a proud "aristocracy" whose impact on American history was spectacular, leading first to the American Revolution and later to the Civil War". Rice was an important part of a slave's diet because it was plentiful and easy to get. //