King Cotton Economy and California Gold Rush - Assignment Example

Midterm Exam Essay 1: King Cotton Economy When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, southern production of cotton took off at a never-before-seen rate. Prior to this invention, cotton had been grown mainly in Georgia and South Carolina, but harvesting it was time-consuming and not very profitable. It could sometimes take up to ten hours just to produce one pound of cotton. Also, growing cotton was not very good for the southern soil. It became nearly impossible to try to plant anything else in the nutrient-depleted ground, and southern planters were forced to constantly look for more soil on which to grow their crops. While the cotton gin did not fix this aspect of cotton production, it did greatly reduce the time and work involved in harvesting the cotton. The cotton gin allowed farmers to produce one thousand pounds of cotton a day. Ten years after the cotton gin’s invention, cotton production had spread as far west as Mississippi, and the nation’s cotton crop had expanded by eight hundred percent (U.S.History.org, 2010a; Burton and Bonnin, 2002). This expansion had a profound effect on the southern economy. Tobacco, indigo, and rice had been the main cash crops of the South, but these were quickly put aside in favor of “King Cotton.” Cotton grew in areas where these other crops couldn’t, and it didn’t need as much tending to or special growing conditions. It was easy to plant, easy to grow, and finally easy to harvest. Cotton prices fluctuated throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, but by the 1850s, the prices were remaining consistently high. By 1860, King Cotton ruled not only the south, but also the rest of the country. The south produced two-thirds of the entire world’s supply of cotton, which had by then become known as “white gold” because of its value. The midwest and the west provided food products for the cotton growers and slaves who worked in the field, and the textile industry in the north benefited from the increased raw material for making clothes and other cloth items. This new dependence on the cotton grown in the South led to an increased need for slave workers and cemented the plantation system as the major way of life in the South in the antebellum period (Cotton Gin, 2010). Before cotton achieved prominence as the cash crop of choice, tobacco was king, and Virginia was the main center of southern cultural influence. With the arrival of King Cotton, the cultural influence shifted to the southern states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the Deep South Black Belt states. While it is true that many of the people living in the South did not own slaves and did not live on large populations, a significant enough number of people did, and they formed their own culture, which was characterized by extreme wealth and opulence. The plantation homes that were built in the decades preceding the Civil War were often large, elaborately decorated structures. Many were built in either the Greek Revival, Classical Revival, or Federalist styles. They featured columns, pillars, porches, balconies, and entrances in both the front and back. Many of the homes also had large ballrooms where parties, wedding receptions, and balls were held to amuse the aristocratic landowners and their families. They also had many bedrooms to accommodate overnight guests, since traveling from one place to another was so difficult and time consuming in the pre-war era. These homes were meant to impress guests and house them in comfort. This facilitated the development of the idea of southern hospitality which is still part of the American consciousness today (Craven, 2010). People loved, and still do love, visiting the plantation homes, and receiving the “royal treatment,” even if only for a little while. The aristocratic southern code of the Black Belt states was, in a way, a holdover from the English way of life and notion of chivalry that was the heritage of so many of the early settlers to the United States. There were certain ways that both men and women were expected to behave in the South. Men were expected to be polite, honest, and upstanding. They need not be maritally faithful, although they were supposed to treat all women with respect. The ideal southern gentleman was highly educated, hospitable, generous, and courageous. He would fight to the death to defend the honor of his family name. Most southern gentlemen were expected to become attorneys, politicians, military officers, or, of course, planters. The ideal southern lady was gentle and soft-spoken. Unlike her male counterpart, she was expected to remain true to her marriage vows. Her main roles were to oversee the running of the plantation house, entertain guests, and see to the needs of her husband and children. Outside employment for southern women was not encouraged (U.S.History.org, 2010c). Although plantation life for the wealthy landowners and their guests was elegant and enjoyable, plantation life for the African slaves was anything but. Field slaves often lived in multi-family, small wooden houses with dirt floors. Poor sanitation was an ever-present issue, and the slaves were frequently sick. The slave owners did not have a completely heartless attitude toward their slaves, however. Slaves who were sick were not allowed to work and even received medical care. Female slaves who were pregnant received free prenatal care and were allowed maternity leave to take care of their newborns (Pendergraft, n.d.). Still, this treatment may not have been as altruistic as it sounds. After all, if the owners lost slaves who died, they lost many hours of work that could be done on the plantation. They would have to spend more money to replace the slave than it would take to give the slave medical treatment. And any baby that was born to an African slave became the property of the landowner; thus, it was smart business to ensure that that baby got the best care possible. Babies born to the African slaves already living on the plantations would either grow up to be more field workers for the owner, or they could be sold at market for a profit. House slaves fared a little better than field slaves. They actually lived in the house with the master’s family, or in separate quarters that were much nicer than those appointed to the field slaves, and they received much better food. Their living conditions were much more sanitary than that of the field slaves because they were sharing them with the master’s family. Still, house slaves had very little privacy and were abused in ways that the field slaves were not as likely to suffer, especially the women. Rape perpetrated against female African slaves by their masters or by other white males living on, or visiting, the plantation was common. In fact, it was so common that it was seldom reported and never prosecuted. Despite these obvious disadvantages to being a house slave, many of them often saw themselves as being superior to the field workers, and a class system developed among the slaves (U.S.History.org, 2010d). As crucial as the plantation life was to the South, it marked a great contrast between the new way of life developing in the North because of industrialization. While the South was clinging to an antiquated way of life, the North was moving toward a brighter, more economically sound, future. Northerners embraced industrialization, while southerners became increasingly afraid of it, and this was one of the factors that caused the major rift between the two halves of the country leading to the Civil War. Also an issue of contention was slavery. Most of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, turning instead to the free wage system of economics. Free labor, as opposed to slave labor, meant that the workers were also the consumers, and this created a larger market for goods produced in the North. This was in direct contrast to the South, with its large numbers of slaves who were unable to buy anything for themselves. All of their food, clothing, and housing, although meager, was provided for them by their masters (Wynveen, 2006; ThinkQuest, n.d.). They were given no money of their own and had no buying power. It is not surprising, then, that the plantation owners were so against adopting the free wage system into their slave economies. While it can be argued that wage workers in the North were little better off than the slaves in the South as far as being enslaved to the one who was providing them with a paycheck, former slaves like Frederick Douglass disagreed with this position. Many free wage laborers went on to build businesses themselves and become their own masters, although these self-employments became fewer and far between with the increased manufacturing in the factories and the disappearance of the artisan classes in the late nineteenth century. Still, free wage workers still fared better in that the possibility of eventually working for themselves existed (Wage Slavery, 2010). Slaves had no such promise of freedom. Their work belonged to their masters, and the whole economic system of the South depended on the slave economy. Free wage work would have toppled the existing plantation economy because why would slaves continue to work for their masters in the difficult cotton fields when they could build a much easier life working for themselves? Slave labor would be lost, and so would most of the profits of the cotton plantations. The plantations could not afford to pay for slave labor. The new free wage economic system in the North had a profound effect on its culture. While the South remained largely agricultural in nature, with fewer numbers of people living over an extended area, the North consisted mainly of crowded cities, with large numbers of people living in very small spaces. Also, a huge economic gulf developed between the people living in the South. Poor farmers competed with wealthy plantation owners. There was no middle ground. Industrialization in the North leveled out the economic playing field, and the free wage system gave rise to a new middle class. This class was responsible for much of the social activism that took place in the antebellum period. Many of these social activists were women, which represented a sort of social reform in itself. No longer were women confined to the home. They were out fighting in the social trenches along with the men. They fought to ban slavery and prostitution, argued for temperance, and sought to improve the living conditions of prisoners and residents of mental institutions (SparkNotes, 2010). It is no wonder, then, that the North and South became polarized enough to divide the nation during the Civil War. The North was fighting to eradicate many of the institutions that the South held dear because of its dependence on the King Cotton economy, and the South refused to embrace the forward thinking of the North. Essay 2: California Gold Rush In 1848, a man named James Marshall discovered a few flecks of gold in a stream at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. Marshall was an employee at the sawmill owned by German immigrant John Sutter (Sutter’s Mill, 2010). The two men were unsuccessful at keeping their discovery a secret. People began to travel to the site from all over the state. More discoveries of gold, by John Bidwell at Bidwell’s Bar and Claude Chana at North Fork Dry Diggins, followed in the next few months, and word of the gold discoveries flew east across the nation (Gold Rush Chronicles, 2003). Over the next year, more than 80,000 Americans would travel west to California in the hopes that they would find gold and strike it rich. This is especially impressive given that both the overland, and oversea, trip to California could take six months itself (Thonus, 2007). People wasted no time in braving the wilds of the wilderness or the hazards of sea travel because they had visions of gold dust and riches dancing before their eyes. Over the next five years, 45,000 immigrants from all over the world would follow in these first American miners’ footsteps hoping to “get rich quick” and send money back to their homelands. These immigrant groups most notably included European Jews and Chinese (U.S.History.org, 2010b). Over all, three hundred thousand people made the gold-hunting journey to California in the 1840s and 1850s (California Gold Rush, 2010). The gold prospectors established mining camps throughout California, and the way of life in these mining camps quickly contributed to the development of the myth of the American “Old West.” The towns often only had one main street, and the saloon was the cultural center of the camp. It was not uncommon for weary miners to spend much a day’s earnings at the saloon, either drinking, gambling, or seeking female companionship for a price. Lawlessness ensued, and often justice was on the side of the man who could hit the hardest or draw the fastest. Whenever a mine’s gold resources were exhausted, or if a gold mine turned out to not contain any gold after all, the mining town was abandoned. These abandoned towns soon came to be known as “ghost towns” (U.S.History.org, 2010b). This was not the fate of all newly established California towns, however. San Francisco, for example, went from being a tiny, unknown mining town in the 1840s to a cultural center by the mid-1850s, due, in part, to the entrepreneurial efforts of Sam Brannan (The Gold Rush, n.d.). In fact, it was Sam Brannan and his newspaper that first publicized the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill (SierraFoothillMagazine.com, n.d.). Brannan owned a general store near Sutter’s Mill and capitalized on the gold discovery by selling his goods to the forty-niners. By doing this, he quickly became California’s first millionaire, even though he never found any gold himself (The West Film Project, 2001). Brannan made a hefty profit for himself by buying up all the supplies the miners would need to pan for gold. He bought mining pans for twenty cents each and sold them for $15 (Thonus, 2007). While this may not have been the most ethical thing to do, it is a good example of the entrepreneurial spirit that was active in the California Gold Rush climate. Leland Stanford left his law firm in the Midwest in 1852 to become a partner in the grocery business his brothers owned. The money he made through that store was used to fund what is now Stanford University (American Experience, 2003). Philip Armour was another man who started a grocery business in California during the 1850s and took the thousands of dollars he made back with him to Wisconsin, where he and his partners founded a meatpacking company, which is still in existence today (Philip Danforth Armour, 2010). Another man who made a fortune on the Gold Rush without actually finding gold was German Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss. Strauss started a dry goods business in San Francisco to cater to the miners there. One miner suggested that he should be selling pants, and Strauss made some with the rough canvas he had on hand to use to make tents. But when the miners complained that the canvas pants were too uncomfortable, Strauss switched to a denim fabric, and immigrant Levi Strauss’s famous blue jeans were born (Bellis, 2010). German-American John Studebaker heard about the Gold Rush and decided he would leave his Ohio home to try to make a name for himself. He had no luck becoming a miner, but he did take a job as a manufacturer of wheelbarrows for miners. He took the $8,000 he made doing this back to his brothers’ wagon manufacturing company, which eventually transitioned to manufacture Studebaker cars (John Studebaker, 2010). While European immigrants fared very well in the climate surrounding the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants were not so fortunate. Once the gold discovery was made, ship’s captains set sail to southeastern China and distributed pamphlets to the people there who had been struck by poverty as a result of the Taiping rebellion. The Chinese were instantly attracted to the idea of making their fortunes in California, and the shipping companies reaped the financial rewards of the increase in booked passages. Once the Chinese arrived in the United States, they were able to find low wage work as cooks, laundrymen, and servants, and the forty-niners welcomed them with open arms because the white men, whose hearts were set on a quick fortune of gold, were not willing to do these jobs themselves. At least, the Chinese were welcomed until the gold started to run out. Then the white men were more than willing to take any job they could find, and the Chinese immigrants were seen as competitors and an economic threat. The Chinese suffered severe anti-foreigner taxes and other forms of persecution simply because they were willing to work, and this persecution lasted well into the 1870s (Norton, 1924). The California Gold Rush was more than just a vehicle for racial hatred. It was also a vehicle for great technological advances. In the early days following the first gold discovery, most miners used a simple technique called panning to retrieve gold from the streams and other small California waterways. As more prospectors entered the area and the gold lust increased, more advanced techniques for gold retrieval were developed. By 1853, a complicated system of hydraulic mining was developed. In this form of mining, a high pressure hose would aim water at a rock bed known to contain gold. The rocks and gold would then be washed into sluices, and the gold would settle into the bottom where it could be collected. Hydraulic mining was soon adopted by other gold miners throughout the world. In addition to “hydraulicking,” forty-niners also used a method called "coyoteing." This consisted of digging a shaft between 6 to 13 meters deep next to a stream. Tunnels extending in all directions from the main shaft were then dug to try to find the areas with the most gold. These methods, while more effective than panning for gold, proved to be detrimental to the environment by releasing rocks, silt, heavy metal, and other sources of pollution into California’s streams and rivers. These environmental effects can still be seen today because many of the previously mined areas cannot support plant life of any kind (California Gold Rush, 2010). Although the environmental effects were devastating, the economic effects of the Gold Rush were largely beneficial to the state of California, the United States, and the world as a whole. From 1792 to 1847, the United States’ cumulative gold production was only about thirty-seven tons. California’s annual gold production from 1848 to 1857 averaged more than twice that amount (Whaples, 2008). This meant that gold was in much greater supply than ever before. The main currency of the state, which was accepted into the union in 1850, changed from cowhides and other agricultural materials to gold and cash. It soon became necessary for banks to be formed to handle all the cash flow to and from the miners. One of the first banks was started in 1850 by D.O. Mills, who came from New York to try to mine for gold. His mining efforts proved unsuccessful, but his business ventures soon made up for that. Mills opened a mercantile and soon started storing gold for the miners. Later, he bought gold from them and started issuing notes for paper money (Doti, 2003). Henry Wells and William Fargo founded their express company in 1852 to provide banking and mail services to the miners. The Wells Fargo Bank is still a major financial institution in California and provides financial services throughout the world (Wells Fargo Bank, 2010). In 1854, the San Francisco mint was formed, and gold bullion was turned into official U.S. gold coins that could be circulated throughout the country. Similarly, California sent some of its gold to the national banks to be exchanged for paper money. This stimulated both the national, and the California, economy. Available capital for investment increased and interest rates plummeted throughout the nation. California gold funded the First Transcontinental Railroad, which made it possible to travel across the country in days, instead of weeks or months. The California gold did not all stay in the country, however. Chile, Australia, and Hawaii produced food for the forty-niners. Britain manufactured supplies for the miners. And clothing and housing, paid for by California gold, made its way across the ocean from China. Prices were raised, and more jobs were created around the world to meet the increased need for supplies in California (California Gold Rush, 2010). The booming California economy also opened up many entrepreneurial possibilities for women which were not available elsewhere in the country. Women made up only about ten percent of the overland travelers to California, and they came for a variety of reasons. Some came with their husbands, but other single women came to seek their own fortunes as miners or businesswomen. Many, but not all, of the women who came alone to the California mining camps worked as prostitutes. Other women worked as entertainers, were hotel owners, ran laundry services, cooked for the men in the mining camps, and some were even responsible for transportation of goods to and from the camps (The Women, n.d.). Women in the mining camps were valued because of their scarcity and also because of their individual worth. They were seldom marginalized, as women in other parts of the country were, and they were even given the right to own their own property, rather than just being seen as property themselves (Women in the California Gold Rush, 2010). Thus, not only did the California Gold Rush advance economic factors in the United States, but it also advanced social issues, even if it would take the rest of the country many years to catch up. Short Identifications African Barbary Coast Four northern African countries made up the Barbary Coast: Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. These are all now part of modern-day Morocco. The Barbary Coast was well-known for two things in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: its slave trade and its piracy. The Barbary pirates were infamous for causing trouble for trade ships. They would capture the ships and then hold the crews for ransom. Under British rule, the United States had protection from the Barbary pirates because of Britain’s agreement to pay tribute to the Barbary nations. Once America won its independence, it lost that protection. In the early years, the United States continued the practice of paying tribute, but when Thomas Jefferson became president, he refused to pay anymore tribute to the Barbary pirates and went to war with them instead. The newly formed United States Navy defeated the Barbary pirates, and they agreed that the United States did not have to make any more tribute payments. The wars also caused a decline in the Barbary slave trade, so that only non-Christians could continue to be enslaved (Gawalt, n.d.; Barbary Slave Trade, 2010). Grimke Sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke were two of the earliest known human rights advocates. The daughters of a prominent South Carolina judge, they experienced slavery and its effects on the subjugated African Americans first hand. They were deeply troubled by the way they saw slaves being treated, so they started an abolitionist campaign. For this, they were rebuked by the Quakers, whose religious organization both sisters had joined in the 1820s. Although they faced great public opposition, the sisters continued to write abolitionist and feminist treatises and gave lectures throughout the north. In the 1840s, the two sisters and Angelina’s husband, Theodore Weld, who was also an abolitionist, became teachers at the Raritan Bay Union boarding school, which encouraged young women to speak publicly and participate in extracurricular activities that they would not be allowed to participate in at traditional schools (Sunshine for Women, 2000; Grimké Sisters, 2010; Raritan Bay Union, 2010). The Louisiana Purchase In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought a huge tract of land from the French government that extended northwest from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. The cost for this expensive land deal was about $15 million. The French government needed the money from the sale to cover its debts to the United States and to pay for more military undertakings in Europe. Many people argued that the purchase was unconstitutional because the Constitution did not permit the United States government to acquire land by treaty. The opposition arguments fell on deaf ears, however, because it was widely accepted that the purchase would eliminate the power France and Spain had to block trade at the port of New Orleans. This purchase doubled the young nation’s size and paved the way for more exploration and wider national expansion (Louisiana Purchase, 2000). Philadelphia Native American Riots In the spring and summer of 1844, a series of riots took place in Philadelphia and the neighboring towns of Kensington and Southwark. The riots were caused by anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments, resulting from the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants into the United States. Much damage was done to Catholic establishments during these riots - so much so that religious leaders cancelled masses in order to protect their parishioners. The majority of the attacks against the Irish Catholics was perpetrated by members of the Know Nothing Party, a political party that tried to claim the superiority of established residents of the United States over the newly immigrated population. Although the Know Nothing party declined in the 1850s, its legacy lived on in the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Protective Association, and even in the twentieth century campaign of George Wallace (McGee, n.d.; Know Nothing, 2010). Tariff of Abominations In 1828, Congress raised import duties on non-southern agricultural staples like hemp, wheat, and liquor in order to protect the farmers in the west and the manufacturers in the north. This was one of the factors that led to John Quincy Adams not being reelected that year. South Carolina, under the leadership of then vice-president John C. Calhoun, immediately reacted to what they considered to be an unfair act with their South Carolina Doctrine. This doctrine posited that a state should have the right to decide for itself whether an act of Congress was unconstitutional or not, and, if it decided it was, the state did not have to follow it. Because of this action, Jackson sent military forces to Charleston harbor to prepare to force South Carolina to secede from the union. When a compromise tariff was passed in 1832, South Carolina backed down and stayed part of the union for the time being, and Jackson had Congress pass an act that declared its laws “supreme and the Union dissoluble” (Tariff of Abominations, n.d.; Tariff of 1828, 2010). References American Experience (2003). Transcontinental railroad: People & events: Leland Stanford (1824-1893). Retrieved 31 October 2010 from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/ peopleevents/p_stanford.html. Barbary slave trade (2010). In Wikipedia. Retrieved 31 October 2010 from http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Slave_Trade. Bellis, M. (2010). Levi Strauss: The history of blue jeans. Retrieved 31 October 2010 from http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventors/a/Levi_Strauss.htm. Burton, O.V. & Bonnin, P.D. (2002). The Confederacy. In Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia. Retrieved 31 October 2010 from http://www.civilwarhome.com/ kingcotton.htm. California Gold Rush (2010). In Wikipedia. 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