So cotton was modern day oil, microsoft, Facebook, amazon...of sorts?
The loom lent itself easily to simple mechanization, HAD already been mechanized where applicable using water power. Machine-made cotton becomes the first product of the Industrial Revolution to take the world by storm, England’s leading export.
More to the point, the insatiable demand for raw cotton makes the Cotton Plantation the fastest way to wealth across the South wherever it could be grown, cotton cultivation grows exponentially, nailing down slavery as the centerpiece of the Southern economy such that most of the capitol wealth in the South consists of enslaved humans.
The cotton gin and improved steam engine designs appear nearly simultaneously in the early 19th Century, cotton takes off, within a generation the collective South is calling itself “The Land of Cotton” and self-identifying as “The Slave States”.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
