US History DUE 4.14.2020 9pm EST

Classmate 1

Eli Whitney’s completed invention of the cotton gin in 1793 decreased the intense and difficult labor of manually ginning cotton”, by easily separating the fibers from the seeds (Shi 281). Although the invention of the cotton gin proved to be fifty times more productive than a hand laborer, slave were needed and in high demand. The number of enslaved people rose with the increase in cotton production, between 1790 and 1860; some 835,000 slaves were “sold south.” Slaves became so valuable that stealing them became a common problem in the southern states, especially in Alabama and Mississippi (Shi 282). As cotton cultivation spread, slaveholders in the tobacco belt, whose crop was no longer profitable, made huge profits by selling their slaves.

Whitney’s cotton gin invention made cotton not only profitable but extremely popular and it became America’s largest export and the primary driver of the nation’s extraordinary economic growth. Cotton brought enormous wealth to southern planters and merchants as well as New England textile mill owners and New York ship owners and cotton traders (Shi 281). British textile mills were processing a billion pounds of cotton a year, 92 percent of which came from the American South (Shi 281).The commercial growing of cotton for world markets spread plantation slavery across the South, especially the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. It also spurred the development of textile mills in New England; expanded the shipping fleets of New York City; and made the ports of New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston sources of enormous profits for the regional and national economies (Shi 282).

Classmate 2

There was not equality to everyone as America transformed into a dynamic economy. As the economy in America was transforming there was a drastic increase in the number of immigrants that settled in the United States. The majority of the immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. After the Irish potato famine in 1845, many of the Irish traveled to the United States to find jobs. The Irish immigrants were very poor and not very welcomed, even by African Americans as the Irish tended to take jobs that were typically African American jobs. “Irish immigrants confronted humiliating stereotypes and intense anti-Catholic prejudice” (Shi, pg. 289). Even with their difficulties, the Irish became a majority of the population of New York and Boston and developed greater opportunities than that of women and African Americans born in America. Technological advances in the cotton industry expanded the need for slaves and they became so valuable and a “necessity” at the time that chances for equality for African Americans were slim. The free blacks also had difficulties with equality and as mentioned previously, Irish immigrants took many of their jobs. Along with the transformation of the economy, there were large increases in the number of high status professions such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, and engineering. Men held most of these professions as compared to women as “the only professions readily available to them “(women)” were nursing and teaching” (Shi, pg. 294). So even with the betterment of the economy and the increased job opportunities, equally opportunities for everyone were not available at the time.