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


 * __Slaves Rights in the Constitution__**

During the time of the revolution, and afterwards when the Constitution was being written, slaves didn't have any rights. They couldn't vote, get employed, or even go anywhere without their owner's permission.

During the time that the Constitution was being written, the issue of slavery caused a lot of disagreements between the representatives at the Constitutional Convention. The men were trying to figure out how to have representation in Congress. They were going to base representation on the population of each state. The states in the South wanted their slaves to count as a part of their population, however, the states in the North did not. The Southern states wanted the slaves to count because that would mean they would have more representatives in Congress. For example, South Carolina would have 87 representatives with slaves and 42 without them. So, the men who were writing the Constitution had a big problem. To solve the problem James Madison proposed that 3 slaves would count as 5 free white men. And so, the 3/5 ratio went into effect.


 * __The Cotton Gin and the Expansion of Slavery__**

The invention of the Cotton Gin revolutionized the economy of the South. It was invented by Eli Witney, and was made out of a wooden drum and had hooks on the inside of it that pulled the cotton through a wire mesh screen. This removed the seeds from the cotton, which usually had to be done by hand, and made short staple cotton a very popular crop. The machine could produce 55 pounds of cotton a day and 93 million pounds a year. Unfortunately, because the cotton gin made cotton so easy to produce, plantation owners needed more slaves to grow and harvest the cotton. So, the cotton gin caused a huge boom in slavery, it reshaped the economy of the South, and further seperated the free and slave states.

Altman, Linda __The Politics of Slavery__