WI No Cotton Gin?

So, I'm not sure if anyone else has posted this already but I did a search and nothing popped up.

Exactly as the title suggests, what if the cotton gin was never invented. Or if that's impossible, as it was a "necessity" for plantation owners who grew cotton, what if it wasn't invented until the mid to late 1800s?

What would the repercussions have upon slavery, and the economic well-being of the American South?

Again, I'm really sorry if this has already been discussed.
 
Interestingly, one major factor in how the North phased out Slavery was by selling their slaves to Southerners in the expanding Cotton kingdoms. I don't know how much no cotton gin would slow down manumission, but it could lead to there being a larger freedman population in the early 19th century North.

Meanwhile, though Cotton would still be a vital part of the South's economy, as a whole the South would be more diversified and the Planters would not have quite as strong a stranglehold on Southern politics, and migration into Alabama, Mississippi, and even Texas would be slower.

So... at the admittedly extreme end of possibilities, if the gin is not invented by 1833 (forty years after OTL), we have by 1840 a North that had slavery for a longer period of time, a South that has a slower growth rate and smaller economy and correspondingly less authority in the Congress, leading potentially to fewer conflicts of interest between the North and South. And possibly no Texas. This means a lot of differences in American History, obviously.

If the cotton gin is invented by 1823 (30 years later than OTL), although Missouri might still end up a Free State, the South will likely make up for "lost time" and still end up pretty similar to OTL. If the gin is invented by or before 1813 (20 years later than OTL) there will be very few effects.

As a teacher of 8th grade history, that's what I get off the top of my head.
 
Wouldn't no cotton gin greatly affect abolitionism though? Or would the planters just turn to wheat, etc.?
 
The demand for slaves might drop off, which means no more importation. It might take a few decades, but slavery could vanish in the Upper South, where slave populations are lower. The Deep South--- it wouldn't be that profittable to have slaves without a cotton boom, but Southerns wouldn't know what else to do with their slaves. They might hang on to the institution because it's a tradition. Not a good reason, but those things die hard down South.
 
The modern version of the cotton gin was created by the American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 to mechanize the cleaning of cotton. The invention was granted a patent on March 14, 1794. There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney. The popular version of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature. In this article the author claims that Catherine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. To date there has been no independent verification of Greene's role in the invention of the gin. However, many believe that Eli Whitney received the patent for the gin and the sole credit in history textbooks for its invention only because social norms inhibited women from registering for patents.
It is my understanding that by 1790 the southern Planters recognized that the 1806 ban on importing slaves was going to pass.
So when Whitney introduced his new improved Gin [there were gin going back to India B.C.] there was a great surge in importation as they tried to beat the ban.
Delay the gin by 12~15 years and this surge will not happen.

The big 3 will remain Tobacco, Sugar and Rice.
As the Tobacco Fields of Maryland, Delaware,Virginia become depleted, they will sell their slave south into the Rice and Sugar farms of Carolina thru Louisiana.
While the Supply [no surge] of Slaves will be lower, so will the demand. As such I don't see any large increase in the Virginia Slave Breeding Farms.

Delay the Gin by 30~40 years and you almost insure that Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia pass emancipation laws in the 1820~1830's.

There will be a lot less Slaves taken into Texas, Changing the Settler patterns and It will probably end up joining the Union as a free State.
 
It is my understanding that by 1790 the southern Planters recognized that the 1806 ban on importing slaves was going to pass.
So when Whitney introduced his new improved Gin [there were gin going back to India B.C.] there was a great surge in importation as they tried to beat the ban.
Delay the gin by 12~15 years and this surge will not happen.

The big 3 will remain Tobacco, Sugar and Rice.
As the Tobacco Fields of Maryland, Delaware,Virginia become depleted, they will sell their slave south into the Rice and Sugar farms of Carolina thru Louisiana.
While the Supply [no surge] of Slaves will be lower, so will the demand. As such I don't see any large increase in the Virginia Slave Breeding Farms.

Delay the Gin by 30~40 years and you almost insure that Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia pass emancipation laws in the 1820~1830's.

There will be a lot less Slaves taken into Texas, Changing the Settler patterns and It will probably end up joining the Union as a free State.

I agree with all of this. As many Southern historians have noted, prior to Eli Whitney's cotton gin, matters had reached a point where slavery was already fading away in the North. There were getting to be serious doubts in the South as well. What I wonder is whether, leaving the politics and horrors of the institution of slavery itself aside for the moment, would there ever be a time where slavery would become uneconomical for the slave owners in the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina?
 

elder.wyrm

Banned
I agree with all of this. As many Southern historians have noted, prior to Eli Whitney's cotton gin, matters had reached a point where slavery was already fading away in the North. There were getting to be serious doubts in the South as well. What I wonder is whether, leaving the politics and horrors of the institution of slavery itself aside for the moment, would there ever be a time where slavery would become uneconomical for the slave owners in the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina?

Slavery faded in the North, not because of the declining economic viability of the institution (plantation economies never did take root north of the Mason-Dixon line), but rather for moral reasons. People genuinely believed that holding slaves was wrong and inconsistent with the republican liberty they and their parent's generation had fought for.

It was the upper South, Virginia and North Carolina, that could see a twilight for slavery in the declining ability for their soils to support cash-cropping tobacco. Whitney's gin changed this because it suddenly became profitable to use slaves in the gathering and processing of cotton.

In the lower South the dimming of the Peculiar Institution was a lot lesser because other plantation crops were always viable in the Sun Belt: sugar being a good example.
 
Slavery faded in the North, not because of the declining economic viability of the institution (plantation economies never did take root north of the Mason-Dixon line), but rather for moral reasons. People genuinely believed that holding slaves was wrong and inconsistent with the republican liberty they and their parent's generation had fought for.

It was the upper South, Virginia and North Carolina, that could see a twilight for slavery in the declining ability for their soils to support cash-cropping tobacco. Whitney's gin changed this because it suddenly became profitable to use slaves in the gathering and processing of cotton.

In the lower South the dimming of the Peculiar Institution was a lot lesser because other plantation crops were always viable in the Sun Belt: sugar being a good example.

Ever see the movie "Amistad"? I used to live about half-a-kilometer from where the prison once stood. I'm still only about 5 klicks away. When it's in it's home port, I see the Amistad replica all the time. I can tell you, that almost 50 years AFTER the invention of the cotton gin, there were plenty of Whites in the North all too ready to commit grievous bodily harm and even murder in defense of slavery. This in supposedly Abolitionist New England.

Lewis Tappan, a rich white abolitionist (and a generational-predecessor to the much more famous abolitionists of the Civil War) funded the legal defense of the Amistad Africans. His abolitionist activities got his homes and businesses burned, and he suffered a number of physical attacks. I don't recall if any of them could be qualified as assassination attempts. Even the lawyer hired to defend the africans, Roger Sherman Baldwin, suffered a number of attacks and death threats. And this man was the grandson of the only Founding Father (Roger Sherman) to be involved in writing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution!:eek: I'm just saying, as a New Englander, that our hands are not completely clean on the issue of slavery.:eek:
 

elder.wyrm

Banned
Ever see the movie "Amistad"? I used to live about half-a-kilometer from where the prison once stood. I'm still only about 5 klicks away. When it's in it's home port, I see the Amistad replica all the time. I can tell you, that almost 50 years AFTER the invention of the cotton gin, there were plenty of Whites in the North all too ready to commit grievous bodily harm and even murder in defense of slavery. This in supposedly Abolitionist New England.

Lewis Tappan, a rich white abolitionist (and a generational-predecessor to the much more famous abolitionists of the Civil War) funded the legal defense of the Amistad Africans. His abolitionist activities got his homes and businesses burned, and he suffered a number of physical attacks. I don't recall if any of them could be qualified as assassination attempts. Even the lawyer hired to defend the africans, Roger Sherman Baldwin, suffered a number of attacks and death threats. And this man was the grandson of the only Founding Father (Roger Sherman) to be involved in writing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution!:eek: I'm just saying, as a New Englander, that our hands are not completely clean on the issue of slavery.:eek:

I never said they were. All I said is that plantation agriculture never really took hold in the North and slavery was banned for moral reasons.
 
I think it very unlikely that the cotton gin would be delayed more than a few years at most. There was a need for it and there were more people working on the idea than just Whitney.
 
I think it very unlikely that the cotton gin would be delayed more than a few years at most. There was a need for it and there were more people working on the idea than just Whitney.

I'm not so sure. The bridge between the invention of gunpowder and cannon is about twelve centuries!:eek: And the guy who built the bridge? IIRC, it was Genghis Khan!
 
Did the cotton gin mean that slavery HAD to be expanded? Couldn't the need for manpower have been solved in some other way like immigration? The north had agriculture that was manpower intensive and didn't fall into the practice of wide spread slavery. What was it that caused this connection between this crop and slavery. Cotton is still grown in the south after the slaves were freed.
 
Did the cotton gin mean that slavery HAD to be expanded? Couldn't the need for manpower have been solved in some other way like immigration? The north had agriculture that was manpower intensive and didn't fall into the practice of wide spread slavery. What was it that caused this connection between this crop and slavery. Cotton is still grown in the south after the slaves were freed.

But cash crops are in most cases only economically viable with cheap labor. Immigrants generally speaking, will not want to come to America to do back breaking work for low pay and little opportunity for social or economic advancement.
 
But cash crops are in most cases only economically viable with cheap labor. Immigrants generally speaking, will not want to come to America to do back breaking work for low pay and little opportunity for social or economic advancement.

Does anyone know, were there any cotton plantations/farms pre-war that were run on free labor?
 
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