Summary Of Slave Country By Adam Rothman

Title: Slave County
Author: Adam Rothman
Publisher: Harvard University Press

With ‘Slave Country’, Adam Rothman explains how the drive for settlers to take the risk of going to the South was all centered around the expansion of territory for plantations with slave workers. With more land that was being used to expand the sugar cane and cotton plantations, settlers were willing to sell their homes in the North and move to the Deep South with their slaves and begin their journey in becoming entrepreneurs. The talk of the great amounts of land and growing demand of cotton making it a smart investment made the risk of starting new in the Deep South sound great and promising. With these promises, the Deep South was the place to be and it grew tremendously in numbers of slaves and settlers.
The biggest concepts that Adam Rothman covers and explains in ‘Slave Country’ are the cotton and sugar plantation industry and how the expansion of it attracted many settlers, the importation and expansion of slaves, and slave rebellion.
With new inventions such as the cotton gin by Eli Whitney and slaves being able to face the conditions of the south, cotton was the best market to get into. Sugar was also experiencing a boom with it being transported along the Mississippi River and it promising to reverse the decline of the indigo industry. Because these markets were such a big success, more land was in high demand. Native American lands were invaded and the Native Americans were pushed to relocate West again and again. The governments were planning on selling the land to high-status white property owning men and were able to do so. However, at times settlers would just move onto the land without paying as it was a hot