All this was permanently changed, and the slavery policy of the South
was made antagonistic to, and not merely divergent from, that of the
North, by the invention of Whitney's saw gin for cleansing cotton
in 1793. It had been known, before that year, that cotton could be
cultivated in the South, but its cultivation was made unprofitable, and
checked by the labor required to separate the seeds from the cotton.
Whitney's invention increased the efficiency of this labor hundreds of
times, and it became evident at once that the South enjoyed a practical
monopoly of the production of cotton. The effect on the slavery policy
of the South was immediate and unhappy. Since 1865, it has been found
that the cotton monopoly of the South is even more complete under a
free than under a slave labor system, but mere theory could never have
convinced the Southern people that such would be the case. Their whole
prosperity hinged on one product; they began its cultivation under slave
labor; and the belief that labor and prosperity were equally dependent
on the enslavement of the laboring race very soon made the dominant race
active defenders of slavery.
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