Plantations & Slavery Spread
-Whitney's cotton gin (short for engine)
-A worker could now clean up to 50 pounds a day
-The cotton gin set the South on a different course from the North
-Southern Life changed because of cotton boom:
1) It triggered a mass move westward
2)Planters grew more cotton rather than other goods
3) More Native Americans groups were driven off southern land. This help cause "Trail of Tears"
4) Slavery continued to be important source of labor 
-After 1808, it became illegal to import Africans for use in slavery 
-Slaveholders with large plantations were the wealthiest and most powerful people in the south
-Most white southern farmers owned few or no slaves 
-In 1840, 8& of African Americans in the south were free
Finding strength in Religion
-Churches the only place where slaves could meet as a group
-spirituals often contained coded messages
Families Under Slavery
-The cruelest part of slavery was the sale of family members away from one another
-many children were seperated from their mothers 
Slave Rebellions
-The most famous rebellion was led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831
-Turner and 70 followers killed 55 white men, women, children
-tuner was caught & hung      
-like almost all rebellions it resulted in harsher slave codes