In the antebellum South, cotton was king. The idea of ​​a diverse agricultural South became a fallacy after Eli Whitney's development of the cotton gin. The ability to gin cotton creates a market for a cash crop and increased slave labor. Therefore, it is cotton that fuels the financial wealth of thousands of Southern families and replaces stable crops. The development of the most beneficial technology in the Old South that we all know as the cotton gin was developed by Yale graduate Eli Whitney in 1793. This occurred shortly after his move from Massachusetts to Georgia, when his former manager pointed out to him that the of cotton was time-consuming and not profitable for plantation owners. As a result, he was asked to draft a resolution of support; thus the cotton gin was born. This amazing machine had the ability to separate cotton from its seeds by hand cranking. The acquisition of the cotton gin was the fact that cotton evolved into the most economically advantageous crop in the Old South. This became the primary reason for the use of the slogan "King Cotton". The success the Southerners achieved from the cotton gin was surprisingly not enough due to their greed. Because the importation of slaves was illegal at the time, plantation owners relied on female slaves to produce children (future slaves) in an effort to expand their cotton crops. This led Whitney to believe that the goal of his invention had taken a wrong turn. Eventually, the overwhelming desire for more cotton slowly became a widespread trend throughout the South due to multiple land purchases to produce more cotton for economic benefit. Another tragic aspect of the c...... middle of paper ...... that African Americans have today. All in all, agricultural diversity in the South primarily revolved around slaves who became valuable property to slave owners due to the increased economic activity they produced during the need for labor. Cotton was the primary crop of the Old South as a result of the development of the cotton gin which made production less difficult for plantation owners to develop wealth. It can be said with some confidence that, compared to other Southern crops, both cotton and the cotton gin would represent the mascots of the Southern region due to their extraordinary agricultural success. To answer the question of what significance the other crops had for the region, they simply didn't because they weren't needed to generate economic activity since that was already being done by both cotton and the cotton gin..