Slavery in America

Around the year 1800 the conditions of slavery began to change. Tobacco was less in demand, and in addition, it depleted the soil. Many in the Chesapeake area switched to wheat and livestock. But these crops, while demanding more skill, required less labor, and many slaveowners emancipated at least some of their slaves. In the lowcountry, the principal crop was rice, which demanded both skill and labor. In this area, slaves lived by the task system, where a slave was required to do a certain amount of work each day, after which he was able to spend the afternoon at his leisure. This encouraged the slaves to work quickly and efficiently. However, a new cash crop was on the rise: cotton. Until 1793 cotton was impractical to produce because of the time consuming business of picking out the seeds. But that year, the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney, and cotton became a very lucrative crop, with production jumping 45,000% in the following 50 years. The ensuing competition forced farms to become more productive, and quick. The task system was abandoned, slave gardens were cleared to plant more cotton, and it became more common for families to be split up for profit. In other aspects however, slave treatment itself became more humane. Living conditions improved, masters began providing food for their own slaves instead of leaving them to grow for themselves, and death rates dropped, even though runaway slaves outnumbered slaves imported into America. The resulting farms spread across the states became known as the "cotton belt". Several major slave revolts took place around this time. All of these revolts were supressed, but America began to realize they could not hold onto their slaves forever. Thomas Jefferson himself said that slaveholders were holding "a wolf by the ears". They could not hold on forever, and they could not let go."