Cotton Gin Invented: Demand for Enslaved Labor Explodes Across the Deep South

Eli Whitney's cotton gin, patented in 1794, made short-staple cotton commercially viable across the interior South. U.S. cotton output grew from 3,000 bales in 1790 to 73,000 bales in 1800 and 178,000 bales by 1810. Rather than reducing the need for enslaved labor, the gin massively increased it: more cotton required more hands for planting, picking, and processing. As Virginia and Maryland tobacco farms declined, they became suppliers of enslaved people to the booming cotton states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This internal slave trade would forcibly relocate approximately 1 million enslaved people between 1790 and 1860.