Cotton Plantation
by M Spadecaller
Title
Cotton Plantation
Artist
M Spadecaller
Medium
Digital Art - Digital & Photographic Art
Description
European laborers coming to the colonies dwindled in the 1600’s as the British economy improved. To replace the loss of laborers, wealthy planters turned to traders to smuggle human chattel. Consequently, this led to enslaving thousands of Africans. By 1680, commercial necessity led to making slavery a morally, legally, and socially acceptable institution in the colonies. Enslaved people living in the United States totaled 700,000 by 1787.
At the start of the Civil War, the Confederacy would have ranked the fourth richest country in the world if it were a separate nation. The slave economy had been incredibly good to American prosperity. The South was supplying 75 percent of the world’s cotton. The belief that all men were created equal in the Southern economy became conveniently meaningless.
Picking and cleaning cotton by hand was a slow process. In 1794, inventor Eli Whitney devised a machine that efficiently and quickly combed the cotton bolls free of their seeds. Many people thought this would diminish the need for slaves. However, it did the exact opposite. Cotton production and distribution grew immensely. The need to cultivate more cotton fell on the shoulders of the slaves. The number of plantations increased in the South and moved west into new territory. Production exploded. U.S. cotton exports grew from 100,000 bales to more than a million between 1801 and 1835. Slavery drove impressive profits.
A feudal society of plantation owners emerged in the South. The aristocratic landowning elite wielded great economic and political power. Below this elite class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people. Smaller farmers without enslaved workers and landless whites were at the bottom, making up 75 percent of the white population—many who hoped for the day when they, too, might own enslaved people.
Despite the wide gap between rich and poor, class tensions among whites were eased by the belief they all belonged to the “superior race.” Many convinced themselves they were doing God’s work taking care of what they believed was an inferior people.
“Cotton Plantation” is a hand-painted digital image and photo composite created in Spadecaller’s Florida Studio on 5/12/2021.
Uploaded
May 12th, 2021
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