Chapter 10: Eli Whitney- an American inventor that created the cotton gin which made cotton highly profitable and caused slavery, which had been on the decline, to explode throughout the South ?sold down the river?- this refers to the shipping of slaves from the upper southern states such as Kentucky down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to the Deep South to cotton farms; this was a threat commonly used by white slave owners in the middle states and was seen as a death sentence by slaves Manumission- manumission refers to the emancipation of slaves; generally from the invention of the cotton gin and onward, manumissions became less common