COTTONGINSCRIPT

COTTONGINSCRIPT

//**__ Cotton Gin __**// //**__ By: Brooke Harper and Raymond Oller. __**//

This cotton gin represents a rather small, mobile version of the larger cotton gin found on many southern cotton plantations in the early 1800s. The cotton gin was used to separate the cotton bole from the seeds, so that the pure fibers can be spun into textiles. Invented by Eli Whitney in the 1790s, the cotton gin enabled the reduction of labor costs in the processing of cotton. As cotton seeds had been removed by hand before the invention of the cotton gin, the new invention made this process much more efficient and cost effective. After the 1790s, cotton emerged as the premier plantation crop in Louisiana and other southern states, because planters viewed as a very profitable crop after the invention of the cotton gin. By the early 1800s, planters in the lower Mississippi Valley began expanding cotton production, and the demand for labor to clear the land and tend to the crops led to an expanded domestic slave market in Louisiana. Hence, the population of enslaved persons in Louisiana increased from 12,290 persons in 1803 to 331,726 persons in 1860. Cotton was mainly grown in the Red River Valley and in the Mississippi River parishes above Baton Rouge.