How did the expansion and increased importance of cotton production after the War of 1812 influence the development of slavery in the United States?

Question

How did the evolving development of slavery in the country make life more difficult and more dangerous for enslaved African Americans?

Answer 1

Answer: An ideal answer will:
1. Discuss how these technological innovations, such as the cotton gin, and increased worldwide demand permitted the explosive expansion of cotton production in the so-called black belt stretching from Georgia to Louisiana.
2. Discuss how the cotton gin and the explosive development of cotton as an export crop increased the value of the slaves even more than the value of the land on which they labored.
3. Discuss how the development of slaves as both a highly valuable laborer in the cotton fields and a potentially highly profitable commodity in the slave trade institutionalized slavery as a permanent economic institution in the South.
4. Discuss how, because the value of African American slaves increased exponentially following the expansion of cotton production, slaves could no longer realistically expect to be eventually granted their freedom by their owners, as was increasingly done during the Revolutionary and pre-Revolutionary eras.
5. Discuss how the development of the slave trade broke up families, separating wives from their husbands and children from their parents.
6. Discuss the harsh physical discipline including severe beatings and whippings, as well as issuing the threat of sale, were used by slave owners to keep slaves in line and prevent rebellions.
7. Discuss and evaluate the success of slave rebellions and escapes from slave-trading ships and from plantations by slaves seeking to escape the overwhelming physical and emotional hardships of slavery by the 1820s.
8. Write a concise and persuasive conclusion.