building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

which definitely contributed to the enormous increase in the yield per
hectare which distinguished the States of the North during the 19 th
century. Slavery and the plantation system meant using agricultural
methods, which in turn gradually impoverished the soil. Similar results
were obtained by the frontier methods used by the Free States.
However, the existence of slavery meant that the South continued to
depend on methods based on the intensive exploitation of the soil even
when the frontier moved further westwards. 31
The expansion of the cotton plantations, together with the growth of the textile
industry in New England and the modernization of cultivation techniques, created
an internal contradiction to the agrarian system of the South, which was one of the
reasons for the Civil War (1861‐1865).
The introduction of the mechanical cotton gin 32 [Figure 13], invented by Eli Whitney
in 1793, boosted both production and the occupation of new lands. Production rose
from 3,000 balls (about 200 kilos each) of cotton in 1790 to 100,000 balls in 1801,
400,000 in 1820 and 4 million in 1860.
The law of demand and supply operated with surgical and tragic precision. In fact
the cotton gin caused a rapid crash in the price of raw cotton and a shadow fell over
the vast cotton landscape. Paradoxically, the machine, which was to free the
peasants from their labour in the fields, instead encouraged an increase in the
numbers of slaves in the South from 875,000 in 1800 to 4 million in 1860.
The plantations extended in proportion and the system ended up by also favouring
the banks in the hands of the rising, manufacturing bourgeoisie. Many landowners
were often forced to ask for loans to anticipate the cost of investments to expand
their crops. Within a few decades, this form of economy damaged the agricultural
system of the Southern States, even though it ensured rich short‐term earnings,
first in South Carolina and Georgia, then in the black belt region between Alabama
and Mississippi, in the Mississippi delta and finally in Texas, stretching for 1,600 Km
31 GENOVESE, D. Eugene, cit. in TEODORI, Massimo, Raccontare l’America. Due secoli di orgogli e
pregiudizi, Milan, Mondadori, 2005, p. 27 [translation in english by the author].
32 See LAKWETE, Angela, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America,
Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, 2003
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