Students investigate the impact of cotton on the history and culture of the United States. Students discover the growth and processing requirements for cotton, recognize how the invention of the cotton gin affected slavery, explain how the plantation system was organized, and ultimately understand the role of cotton in the Civil War. Grades 9-12

boll: the part of a cotton plant that contains the seeds; the pod or capsule of some plants, such as cotton and flax

gin: to separate cotton fiber from seeds and waste material

Compelling Question: How did cotton impact the history and culture of the United States?

1. Tell students that the most commonly used phrase describing growth of the American economy in the 1830s and 1840s was "Cotton is King." Explain that cotton textiles were one of the first industrially-produced products world-wide. Three quarters of the world's cotton came from the American South.
2. To begin to understand the process of growing cotton, inform students that you will be watching a short video clip about modern cotton production. Watch the segment from America's Heartland, California Cotton Harvest. As students watch the video clip, have them take note of what they would NOT have had in the 1800s for the process of growing and processing cotton. 
3. Have students share their observations from the video of what we have today in cotton farming compared to what they likely had back in the 1800s. (Technology such as tractors, machinery, and highly sophisticated harvesting and processing machines.)
4. Ask how cotton plantation owners accomplished the tasks that are now performed by machines.
5. On the board display the question, "How did cotton impact the history and culture of the United States?" Explain to the students that they will be investigating this question.

Supporting Question 1: Why did plantation owners in the South want slaves?

Teacher Note: If you would like to demonstrate the process of ginning, or to have students experience ginning, find a local source for cotton bolls or order the Cotton Boll Kit from agclassroomstore.com. Each cotton boll contains 4-5 sections of fiber. When hand ginning cotton, each student can remove the seeds from an entire cotton boll or one section. This is an optional experience.

1. Share with students how cotton is grown and harvested:
   • The cotton plant grows in climates with long, hot, dry summers. Students should recognize that cotton was only grown in the South. Northern climates are not suitable for cotton farming.
   • Cottonseed is typically planted in April when the soil is warm enough for the seeds to germinate.
   • Cotton fields need to be kept free from weeds, insects, and disease.
   • A healthy plant will flower, turning yellow-white and then red. When the flower dies, it leaves a boll which bursts open exposing the cotton to dry in the sun.
   • Cotton is fully mature and ready for harvesting approximately 160 days after it is planted.
   • After being picked, cotton bolls need to be ginned to remove the seeds from the cotton fibers.
2. Remind students that cotton is a very common fiber used in fabric such as their jeans, shirts, and underwear. Let them know that the process of creating cotton fabric requires the removal of seeds. Today we use machines to do this work, but in the 1800s slaves removed these seeds. The process is called ginning. For an understanding about the ginning process in the 1800s read this excerpt from Paul Smith below. Explain that Paul Smith was a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia when he was a child. When he was 74 years old, Mr. Smith was interviewed about his experiences as a slave.
   
   Us chillun sho did lak to see 'em run dat old gin, 'cause 'fore dey ever had a gin Marster used to make us pick a shoe-full of cotton seeds out evvy night 'fore us went to bed. Now dat don't sound so bad, Missy, but did you ever try to pick any seeds out of cotton?
    
3. Demonstrate or invite students, if they would like, to experience first-hand the task of hand ginning cotton. This experience highlights how tedious and difficult this work was.
4. Project the Cotton Field Image onto a large screen. Give each student or group of students a cotton boll. Have the students examine the dry, woody stem of the cotton boll. Explain to the students that the sharp plant material makes it painful to pick cotton bolls by hand.
   
5. Ask the students, "Why did plantation owners in the South want slaves?" Their responses should connect to a need for labor leading to economics. Producing cotton required a lot of labor! In addition, Southern plantation owners believed that the path to wealth and opportunity was owning land and having slaves to work the land. Plantations were characterized by social and political inequality and the exploitation of slave labor.²
6. Share the Mapping History Module The Spread of Cotton and of Slavery 1790-1860. Point out that as more cotton was planted, more labor was needed to grow and harvest the cotton. The Southern economy relied on producing and exporting cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco and wheat. Production of work-intensive cash crops like cotton and tobacco expanded and the Southern economy increasing the need for slave labor to keep production costs low to increase profits.

Supporting Question 2: How did the invention of the cotton gin affect slavery?

Teacher Note: The purpose of this activity is to investigate cotton, the process of hand ginning cotton, and the impacts of the cotton gin. Adjusting this investigation into a role-play or simulation of a slave activity is absolutely discouraged. In addition, no student should be required to participate in hand ginning cotton. We recommend consulting your administrator and/or communicating with parents prior to presenting this lesson. You may want to consider hand ginning cotton as a teacher demonstration if you anticipate tension or uncomfortable feelings from your students. For more information concerning teaching about the history of African Enslavement, refer to research conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center Teaching Hard History: American Slavery.

1. Discuss the following points about cotton and slavery:
   • After hand picking cotton in the fields all day, slaves would join the elderly, infirm, and children to gin the cotton by hand.
   • Slaves were required to remove as much lint as possible from each seed. The more fiber removed from the seeds, the more profit could be made from each boll.
   • A slave would typically hand gin about one pound of cotton (about 120 cotton bolls) a day.
2. Using the cotton bolls from the previous activity, ask the students to predict how many seeds are in each boll. After recording their predictions, allow time for any students who would like to hand gin the cotton.
3. After ginning, have the students compare their prediction to the actual number of seeds from their cotton boll. Refer back to the excerpt of the Paul Smith interview (from Supporting Question 1 of the lesson). Ask the students to consider the work involved in filling a shoe with ginned cotton seeds.
4. Have the students weigh the fibers from one boll and compare it to a pair of jeans. A pair of jeans is almost one hundred percent cotton (minus the zipper and buttons).
5. Ask the students to guess how many cotton bolls are needed to produce a pair of jeans. (approximately 360 bolls)
6. Read the book Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin by Jessica Gunderson.
7. While discussing how Eli Whitney's cotton gin worked, show Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin—How it Works. Use the Linking History and Technology handout to provide additional information. 

    

8. Give each student a copy of the Cotton Gin Diagram. Instruct them to write a description of how Eli Whitney's cotton gin worked on the back of the diagram. Using the cotton and seeds the students ginned, glue the fiber and seeds to the appropriate spots on the diagram.
9. Ask the students, "How do you think the invention of the cotton gin affected slavery?" After listening to the student ideas, watch the video How Inventions Change History (for better and for worse).
10. Give each student or small group of students a copy of the Cotton Gin Before and After graphic organizer and cards. Instruct the students to cut out the cards and then decide if each statement is descriptive of the time before the invention of the cotton gin or after. Have the students place the cards in the appropriate section of the graphic organizer and check their work.
11. Revisit the question, "How did the invention of the cotton gin affect slavery?" (The cotton gin made cotton more profitable and farmers in the South began to grow more cotton. Growing more cotton meant an increased demand for slaves.)

Supporting Question 3: How was the plantation system organized?

1. Ask students to define the word, plantation. As you discuss, ask guiding questions to stimulate thought. Examples include:
   • What kind of buildings would you see on a plantation?
   • Who lived on plantations?
   • What did they grow?
   • Who performed the labor?
   • What kind of labor was necessary to perform?
2. Give each student one copy of the Plantation System doodle notes. Instruct them to take notes as you continue your discussion.
3. Define a plantation as an estate on which cash crops such as coffee, sugar, cotton, or tobacco were cultivated by resident labor. Clarify that a cash crop is a crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the grower. 
4. Continue describing the plantation system and encouraging students to continue adding to their doodle notes with the following resources:
   • Show Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon. 
   • Browse the Slavery webpage on the Mount Vernon website to learn about what enslaved workers ate, where they lived, what they wore, family life, and more.
   • Explore the biographies of enslaved people at Mount Vernon
   • Take a virtual tour of George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation.
5. Summarize and share answers to the question, "How was the plantation system organized?" (Plantations were organized into a system where enslaved people provided primarily farm labor. However, they also assisted with house work, cooking, and various tasks such as blacksmithing, sewing, etc.)

Supporting Question 4: What role did cotton play in the Civil War?

1. Ask the students, "What role did cotton play in the Civil War?" After listening to the student ideas, show the US Secession Map. Explain that the Civil War began on April 12, 1861 and was fought between the Union (the Northern states) and the Confederates (the Southern states that seceded from the United States).
2. Ask the students, "What was the central cause of the Civil War?" After listening to the student ideas, organize the class into small groups. Assign each group one of three topics about events leading up to the Civil War—The Tariff of 1828, Westward Expansion, and the Election of 1860. Provide each group with the Civil War Topic Page for their assigned topic.
3. Have the groups read through the information, click on the QR codes for more information, and discuss their topic. Civil War Topic QR Code URLs:
   • The Tariff of 1828: How the Nullification Crisis Happened
   • Westward Expansion: An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas; Causes of the Civil War - Popular Sovereignty and Westward Expansion (Start at minute 1:00 and end at minute 3:26)
   • The Election of 1860: Republican Banner for the 1860 Presidential Election; Story of US Election of 1860 and Secession (Watch until minute 4:00)
4. Bring the whole class back together. Ask the students, "What issue was central to each of the topics?" (Slavery) Revisit the question, "What was the central cause of the Civil War?" (Slavery)
5. Project the Slave Advertisement and Cotton Plantation primary sources onto a large screen and examine each primary source.
6. Use the following talking points to lead a discussion about the main cause of the Civil War—slavery:
   • The North and South had very different opinions about slavery.
   • In 1860, there were almost 4 million slaves in the South.
   • Slavery existed for a time in the North.
   • By the 1800s, there were very few slaves in the North.
   • Many in the North opposed slavery and even helped runaway slaves escape from the South.
   • Agriculture in the South, especially the production of cotton, relied heavily on the use of slaves.
   • Many people in the South felt that they would be financially ruined if the right to own slaves was taken away from them.
   • The Confederate states went to war to preserve the institution of slavery.
   • The Northern states went to war to preserve the United States as a whole unit.
7. Revisit the question, "What role did cotton play in the Civil War?" (The cotton industry was the greatest contributor to the Southern economy. The South depended on slave labor for the production of cotton. The Confederate states went to war to preserve the institution of slavery. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. See the "Economies of the North and South" tile of the Growing a Nation Timeline for more information.)

Summative Performance Task 

Using evidence from historical sources, construct an argument (e.g., essay, project, video production, portfolio, detailed outline, poster) that addresses the compelling question, "How did cotton impact the history and culture of the United States?"

1. https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/students/docs/FINAL%20C3%20Fact%20Sheet%209-13-13-1.pdf
2. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/plantation-system/

Statistics and graphics from the National Cotton Council's Cotton Counts educational materials.

Paul Smith, Ex-Slave Federal Writer's Project full interview https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.043/?sp=325

• A World of Cotton
• America's Heartland: Cotton Episodes
• Cotton Boll Kit
• Cotton Campus
• Cotton Counts Educational Resources
• Cotton Education Kit
• Cotton Reader
• Cotton... From Field to Fabric
• Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin
• How It's Made: Cotton Yarn
• Levi Strauss and Blue Jeans
• Planet Money Makes a T-shirt
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry