| Slavery spread from the seaboard to some of
the new western territories and states as new cotton fields were
planted, and by 1830 it thrived in more than half the continent. Within
10 years after the cotton gin was put into use, the value of the total
United States crop leaped from $150,000 to more than $8 million. This
success of this plantation crop made it much more difficult for slaves
to purchase their freedom or obtain it through the good will of their
masters. Cotton became the foundation for the developing textile
industry in New England, spurring the industrial revolution which
transformed American in the 19th century.
From 1790 to 1810, close to 100,000 slaves moved to the new cotton
lands to the south and west. From 1810 until the Civil War, 100,000
slaves were forced westward each decade--a half million in total. As
cotton cultivation spread, slaveholders in the tobacco belt, whose crop
was no longer profitable, made huge profits by selling their slaves.
This domestic slave trade devastated black families. American-born
slaves were torn from the plantations they had known all their lives,
placed in shackles and force-marched hundred of miles away from their
loved ones.
Since 1790s abolitionists had been demanding that the United States
put an end to its international slave trade. The Pennsylvania Abolition
Society, the Quakers in New York, and other organizations presented
anti-slavery trade memorials to Congress. In January 1800, free black
people in Philadelphia petitioned Congress to end the trade. In the
meantime, though, the cotton boom spurred slaves imported from Africa:
20,000 came to Georgia and South Carolina in 1803 alone. Finally, on
January 1, 1808, Congress did officially ban the international slave
trade, a right granted it under the terms of the U. S. Constitution.
Black communities throughout the country celebrated the long-awaited
event. Absalom Jones gave a sermon at Philadelphia's African Church,
commemorating the day as one of thanksgiving. Even
following the ban, however, an illegal international slave trade
continued. |
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The cotton boom and the
resulting demand for slaves brought increased danger for northern free
blacks: the possibility of being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the
South. The practice of kidnapping was frighteningly widespread. The 1793
Fugitive Slave Act enabled any white person to claim a black person as a
fugitive, unless another white person testified otherwise. Blacks were
not allowed to testify against whites in court according to southern
law. Absalom Jones petitioned Congress for the protection of free
blacks, to no avail. Children were highly vulnerable to kidnapping
rings. Often indentured and living away from their parents, they could
disappear without anyone noticing, since their employers assumed they
had gone to their families. And since children changed so much as they
grew, there was little likelihood of their being recognized and rescued
after years of slavery. Many southern slave owners took a "no
questions asked" approach to purchasing slaves. Kidnapped free
blacks joined the slaves who had been imported into the lower South,
where the work conditions were difficult and unhealthy.
The spread of slavery westward led to bitter debate in
Congress, as the new states entering the Union could tip the balance
between proslavery and free voting blocs. The Missouri Compromise of
1820 resolved a crisis over the admission of Missouri as a slave state,
and for a while, established a boundary for slave lands westward across
the Louisiana purchase territories. But as the century progressed, the
spirit of compromise would prove increasingly fragile.
Although there was some hope immediately after the
Revolution that the ideals of independence and equality would extend to
the black American population, this hope died with the invention of the cotton gin
in 1793. With the gin (short for engine) raw cotton could be quickly
cleaned; suddenly cotton became a profitable crop, transforming the
southern economy and changing the dynamics of slavery. The first federal
census of 1790 counted 697,897 slaves; by 1810, there were 1.2 million
slaves, a 70 percent increase. |