Life on a Cotton Plantation:
The Cotton Gin and Lowell Cloth
Documents

Cotton farmed by enslaved laborers was the lifeblood of Lowell’s textile mills. The documents in this collection explore life and work on a southern cotton plantation, the spread of the cotton gin, and the cruel irony of “Lowell cloth” – produced from slave-picked cotton, turned into coarse cloth by Lowell’s mills, and then sold back to plantations to clothe enslaved people.

What impact did cotton cultivation have on the lives of enslaved people?

Document 11: Lowell Manufacturing Company, Statistics of Lowell Manufactures, January 1, 1835

Document 12: “The Negro Law of South Carolina,” 1848

Document 13: Growth of Cotton and Slavery Graph, 1800-1860

Document 14: Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, Solomon Northup, 1853

Document 15: Cloth Purchases, Evans Plantation, Louisiana, 1858-1859

Document 16: Photograph – “Picking cotton near Montgomery, Alabama,” J.H. Lakin, c.1860

Document 17: Map of Enslaved Population, United States, 1860

Document 18: “Slave Narrative” Excerpts, Works Progress Administration, 1936-1938

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Life on a Cotton Plantation: The Cotton Gin and Lowell ClothDocuments