The correct answer is small upcountry farmers had little money to purchase slaves to operate the cotton gin, leaving the industry to low country farmers.
The cotton gin was an invention made by Eli Whitney in 1793. The cotton gin was a machine that easily removed seeds from cotton. Before this invention, cleaning cotton was a long and tedious process. With the new cotton gin, it drastically reduced the time and price of producing cotton. This resulted in many plantation owners and farmers in Southern states (specific the low country) switching to growing cotton as their main cash crop.
