Slavery was extremely important in order to grow the nation’s economy throughout the nineteenth-century. Slaves in the nineteenth-century would transform from primarily agricultural to a more industrial way of generating their income through cotton textile factories. These factories were the first factories of the industrial system, and were pivotal to changing the way people worked. Despite this, cheap cotton is the reason why these factories were possible. Thus, slavery had an immense effect on the growth of the U.S. economy.
Above all, cotton became the dominant driver of economic growth in early nineteenth-century America. In Edward Baptists “This Half Has Never Been Told” he argues that “The total gain in productivity …show more content…
began in New England in late eighteenth-century. Textile production was the first industry created. Creation of the mills further transformed into a new way that people dressed. People developed different styles of decorating homes and sought clothing that was once foreign to them. One way these factories boosted the U.S. economy was through job growth. People would move from their farmland and small towns to larger cities in order to work in such factories. By mid-nineteenth century, these factories provided textile products to everyone, anywhere. Cheap cotton and increased productivity is the main reason why the textile mills functioned properly. Cheaper cotton meant cheaper cloth and clothing. Thus productivity gains in cotton fields also translated into benefits for consumers of cloth. Most of the world eventually acquired clothes made in the industrial West from cotton picked in the U.S. South (Baptist …show more content…
They were met by nearly 100,000 Union soldiers, which resulted in a devastating and unbelievably bloody three-day battle that produced over 50,000 casualties. In the end, the battle served as the major turning point of the war. The Gettysburg Address, which remains probably the most famous speech in American history and took only three minutes to deliver, was an economical but beautiful elegy that also shifted the meaning of the war from a military conflict to a moral struggle over the destruction of slavery and the viability of democracy itself. In just 272 words, Lincoln imbued the war with an almost theological meaning, positioning fallen soldiers as martyrs in the fight for a “new birth of freedom.” The United States shifted from an agricultural to industrial society following the civil war. Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” was widely discussed and thought to be unclear of what Lincoln meant it to