Cotton production and slavery were inseparable in the South. The global demand for American cotton was literally infinite. Northern American and British textile mills, and other foreign markets, would take as much raw cotton as slave labor could produce, which fostered a skyrocketing demand for slaves. In 1793, the US produced 5 million pounds of cotton. Thirty years later, thanks to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the proliferation of slave labor, this output rose to 180 million pounds. On the eve of the Civil War, the South produced 85% of the world’s raw cotton, and “King Cotton” in some form
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