Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
To encourage them, the God of Nature makes the great Southern staple, cotton, to be in greater demand for the supply of the world; the cotton-gin is invented, and immediately the slaves are thereby assisted to retain that hold upon the South which was about to be broken off.
What effects did the invention of the cotton-gin have upon slavery? In imagination visit some old plantations and tell what you can about slave life there. Why has Washington been called the "Father of his Country"?
Vermont, the territory of which had been claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, was the first new State admitted to the Union . A genius for mechanical invention early manifested itself in the country. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin , for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton-plant, a machine which indirectly lent a powerful impulse to the production of cotton.
Notable indeed is it that on the very day Watt obtained his first patent, January 5th, 1769, Arkwright got his spinning-frame patent. Only the year before Hargreaves obtained his patent for the spinning-jenny. These are the two inventors, with Whitney, the American inventor of the cotton-gin, from whose brains came the development of the textile industry in which Britain still stands foremost.
Verily, I believe he can make anything." As a result of this conversation, in two or three months Eli Whitney had invented the cotton-gin , although in so doing he had to make all his own tools. The cotton-gin brought about great changes. Before its invention it took a slave a whole day to separate the seed from five or six pounds of cotton fibre.
Bridges he built from cotton-gin houses, mantelets for his guns from gunny bags and old rope, and shields for his sharpshooters from the mould-boards of old ploughs found on the abandoned plantations. All this time wherever possible he continued his studies in natural science.
Following the English inventions in spinning and weaving, and the utilization of the stationary steam-engine, a Connecticut man, Eli Whitney, had invented a cotton-gin, for separating the seed from the fibre, and the cotton plant came to the front of the scene. The crop rose in value in twenty years from $6,000,000 to $20,000,000.
But as the wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms.
All of this was prepared and manufactured into fabrics for clothing and bedding at home. The seed from the cotton was picked by hand; for, as yet, Whitney had not given them the cotton-gin.
The cotton-gin was invented in 1793; and though it has been in use for nearly one hundred years, it is virtually unimproved.... Hence the great merit of the South, financially and commercially. It has made England rich, and changed the commerce of the world.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking