Gregg's Question: Cotton, Mills and the 1860 Census

Use a mill builder's essay and state census data to compare two economies.

Answer Key

Gregg's question

Read the passage and the source. Then answer the questions.

Why Not Make Our Own Cloth?

1In 1844, William Gregg, a Charleston businessman who had made his first fortune as a jeweler, began writing newspaper essays that asked his fellow South Carolinians an uncomfortable question. Their state grew some of the finest cotton in the world. Why did nearly all of it leave the state as raw fiber, while the cloth and shoes people wore came back from New England or Britain?

2Gregg believed he knew the answer. In South Carolina, almost all spare money went into land and enslaved people. Cotton prices were often high, and planters usually bought more fields and enslaved more workers instead of building mills. Merchants in the North earned money shipping the bales, spinning them and selling finished goods back to the South.

3Gregg decided to show that a mill could work in the South. In the late 1840s his company opened a cotton mill at Graniteville, beside a creek in the hills of western South Carolina, near Augusta, Georgia. The rushing water turned the mill's machines. Gregg hired poor white families from the countryside, many of whom had owned little or no land, and built cottages, a church and a school for them. The mill earned steady profits, and visitors praised it. Yet only a few Southern investors followed his example.

4The census of 1860 showed how far apart the regions had grown. Across the South, most free families farmed. Many small farmers raised corn and hogs mainly to feed their own households, while large plantations grew cotton, rice, sugar and tobacco for sale. In older states such as Virginia, where tobacco had worn out much of the soil, many farmers turned to wheat. Many Virginia enslavers sold enslaved people to cotton planters farther south, and families were often torn apart by these sales.

5In the North, factory towns, railroads and cities kept growing, while most farm families still worked their own land. Wage jobs and cheap Midwestern land drew millions of immigrants, most of them from Ireland and Germany. Far fewer immigrants settled in the cotton states, where enslaved people did most of the hard labor and wage jobs were scarcer. New Orleans, a busy port, was the main exception.

6Gregg did not oppose slavery. He argued that the South could keep slavery and still build mills, and he chose white workers for Graniteville. When the Civil War began in 1861, the South had far fewer factories than the North to supply its armies with cloth, shoes and weapons.

Source: adapted and shortened from William Gregg's Essays on Domestic Industry (1845), written for South Carolina newspaper readers who owned land and businesses.
"We send our cotton away to be made into cloth, and then buy it back at a price that pays the shipper, the manufacturer and the merchant. Our money goes into land and slaves, as if nothing else were a safe investment. Meanwhile, thousands of poor white people in our hills have no steady work. Cotton mills would give them employment and keep our money at home."

According to Gregg's essay, why was South Carolina losing money on the cotton it grew?

A. Its hill farmers kept the best cotton for themselves.
B. Britain had stopped buying raw cotton from the South.
C. Others earned the profits from turning it into cloth.
D. Its planters grew too little cotton to sell abroad.

Underline the sentence from paragraph 2 that shows who outside the South profited from Southern cotton.

Gregg believed he knew the answer.In South Carolina, almost all spare money went into land and enslaved people.Cotton prices were often high, and planters usually bought more fields and enslaved more workers instead of building mills.Merchants in the North earned money shipping the bales, spinning them and selling finished goods back to the South.

Based on paragraph 3, why did Gregg build his mill beside a creek in the hills?

A. Ships could load its cloth for Britain at the mill.
B. Moving water could power the mill's machines.
C. The hills had the richest cotton fields in the state.
D. Planters on the coast refused to sell him any land.

Gregg did not oppose slavery and hired white workers for his mill. What does this tell a historian about his essay?

A. His case for mills was about money, not ending slavery.
B. He wanted enslaved people to run the new Southern mills.
C. He believed the South should stop growing cotton.
D. He hoped to persuade Northern readers to buy his cloth.

The 1860 census by state

Use the census table and the passage.

Six States in the 1860 Census (percents rounded)
State	Region	Enslaved (%)	Born abroad (%)	Some main products
Massachusetts	North	0	21	Cloth, shoes, fish
Ohio	North	0	14	Wheat, corn, hogs
Virginia	Upper South	31	2	Tobacco, wheat
South Carolina	Deep South	57	1	Cotton, rice
Mississippi	Deep South	55	1	Cotton
Louisiana	Deep South	47	11	Sugar, cotton

Use the census table. The percent columns show the share of each state's people.

In 2 of the six states, more than half of all people were enslaved. In Ohio, the share of people born abroad was about 7 times the share in Virginia.

Which conclusion does the census table best support?

A. Most of the slave states shown had very few immigrants.
B. The Deep South drew the largest shares of immigrants.
C. Ohio's main products included cotton and sugar.
D. Virginia had a larger enslaved share than Mississippi.

Louisiana's share of people born abroad was much higher than South Carolina's. Based on paragraph 5, what best explains this?

A. Louisiana had a smaller enslaved share than Massachusetts.
B. Its port city, New Orleans, drew many newcomers.
C. Its sugar fields paid higher wages than Ohio's farms.
D. It had more factory towns than the Northern states.

Use the table and paragraphs 4 and 5. Sort each detail by the part of the country it describes best.

Shoe and cloth factories paying wagesWorn-out tobacco land turned to wheatCotton and rice plantationsWheat, corn and hog farms with no slaverySugar and cotton shipped through a busy portEnslavers selling people to planters farther south

North	Upper South (Virginia)	Deep South
Shoe and cloth factories paying wages Wheat, corn and hog farms with no slavery	Worn-out tobacco land turned to wheat Enslavers selling people to planters farther south	Cotton and rice plantations Sugar and cotton shipped through a busy port

Weigh the evidence

Use the passage, the source and the table.

Which pair of details best shows that Gregg's plan changed the Southern economy very little by 1860?

A. He wrote essays in 1844 and opened his mill later.
B. His mill earned steady profits, and visitors praised it.
C. Few investors copied him, and factories stayed scarce.
D. He hired poor white families and built them a school.

10.

Based on paragraph 4 and the table, how did the spread of cotton in the Deep South affect many enslaved families in Virginia?

A. Most were freed when Virginia farmers grew wheat.
B. Most earned wages on Virginia's tobacco farms.
C. Many moved north to take mill jobs in Ohio.
D. Many were split apart by sales to the cotton states.

11.

Claim: "By 1860, cotton and slavery held back the growth of factories in the South." Do you agree or disagree? Make your own claim, use at least two pieces of evidence from the passage, the source or the table, and explain your reasoning.

I agree. Gregg's essay says South Carolina's money went "into land and slaves," and paragraph 2 says planters usually bought more fields and enslaved more workers instead of building mills, because cotton prices were often high. That left little money for factories, so Northern merchants and mills earned the profits from spinning Southern cotton. Gregg proved a Southern mill could make money at Graniteville, but only a few investors followed him (paragraph 3). The table also shows that in South Carolina and Mississippi more than half of all people were enslaved, while only about 1 percent were born abroad, so the wage workers who filled Northern factories rarely came to the cotton states. Because the South's wealth and labor were tied up in cotton and slavery, it had far fewer factories than the North when the war began in 1861.