With all due respect to labor in the field… people had been picking cotton for ages and it was not a major export until the cotton gin. Did they teach you about that?
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Those were steps… where did it start?
In the US?
Did the cotton gin decrease or increase the need for slavery?
Who picked the cotton to get into the cotton gin?
Who taught you history?
History. 
Yes there was a time before 2017
Also slavery didn’t make America an economic super power. You can argue that it was foundational for its growth sure but no it had no direct effect on us becoming an economic super power
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Contradictory.
If it’s foundational then of course it was pivotal to the US becoming a economic superpower.
Turn up the volume and say this again. Someone can’t hear you?
Is this all a part of that 1619 history thingy or CRT that some are pushing to be taught in school as our nation’s actual history?
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Don’t digress. You were saying that slavery made the US an economic power and you cited cotton as the reason. Were people in the civilized world naked before africans started picking American cotton? Ever hear of flax? Ever hear of wool? Leather?
A little but not really. Given the number of intervening events it is not what led to it being a super power but again was certainly foundational. The break up of the country due to civil war is one of those major events that breaks the chain no pun intended
There are so many tales now that are not even challenged… they have been said for so long. Rewriting history … like the progs saying almost every historical character was gay just to try to normalize it. Well… admittedly that’s hyperbole.
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The US produced 60% of the world cotton.
Exported 2000 bales a year… in the final years of slavery.
Got it. And it accounted for about 50% of all US exports … in the final years of slavery. Got it.
So this number you all like to throw around is valid - not throughout the slave period but - only for a few years at the end of slavery.
How did a few years of being a major contribution to our exports in our several hundred year history - or even in the 70 years that ended with the abolishment of slavery - make us into a super economic power again?
Look… there’s alot to be proud of. The hard work is impressive. My own significant other and wife of 25 years picked tobacco from the time she could stand up in a field. Such people have an uncommon strength. So kudos to your ancestors. But let’s not pretend that America was built on the backs of slaves picking cotton.
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- Cuba.
Not really. Good post.
No. You are regurgitating propaganda.
No, the Deep South did. And what happened to it after 1865?
And another thing they don’t want you teach you is that prior to the civil war, growing cotton was done on consignment… with foreign buyers paying for their purchases simply by liquidating the indebtedness of the growers… and in good years providing extra to invest in the next year’s crop. So it wasn’t the case that all those foreign sales brought in cash that went into American infrastructure, industry or banks, making it some kind of economic superpower. Most of it simply went back into the cotton plantations for the next year.
I don’t mean to denigrate the importance of black people in the US. We owed them alot. But what we owed them has nothing to do with any “economic powerhouse” brought about through cotton.
It’s hard to face the facts.
I don’t.
