1. EQ: How does Eli Whitney’s cotton gin lead to the Civil War? Cotton: White Gold of Georgia: Today and Yesterday

2.  Cotton was a profitable crop but was not grown on a large scale because of the slow and difficult process of removing seeds from cotton bolls in order to produce a usable fiber  Invention of cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 changed this situation  Gin could easily and quickly remove seeds  Caused a fantastic explosion in southern cotton production  3000 bales in 1790  178,000 bales in 1810  732,000 bales in 1830  4.5 million bales in 1860

3.  South became the world’s leading producer of cotton by 1842  Produced 2/3s world output and 65% of all American exports  Cotton mills in north depended on southern cotton  Prosperity in South caused by cotton made it a major market for northern manufactured products  Cotton was an important part of American prosperity and economic well-being  In 1860, 25% of all Southerners owned slaves.  Of that 25%  52% owned 1-5 slaves  35% owned 6-9 slaves  11% owned 20-99 slaves  1 % owned 100 or more slaves  Those who owned 20 or more slaves - about 3% of the entire white population - controlled the social, political, and economic power of the South.

4.  http://www.gpb.org/georgiastories/story/king _cotton_and_the_cotton_gin http://www.gpb.org/georgiastories/story/king _cotton_and_the_cotton_gin  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAUQNM ldp_Y&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAUQNM ldp_Y&feature=related

5. Cotton in the fields

6. Pictures of Cotton: The plant

8. Bales are ready for ginning and finally: Jeans, clothes, etc.

9. Collecting of cotton to be ginned

10. Ginning: The 2 nd picture you can see the seeds at the bottom

11. The seeds after ginning process

12. Cotton: the final version

13. A Modern Cotton Gin.

14.  1.  How does the cotton gin work? 2.  What products are made from cotton? 3.  How do you think this cotton gin affects the slaves? 4.  How do you think this cotton gin helps the plantation owners? 5.  What would happen if this would never have been developed? How would it have changed life then and now?  6. How did Whitney’s cotton gin lead to the Civil War?