Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Wherever the hand of the Northman touches, in these times, it shows a superior touch, whether in improvising a six-action cotton-gin, in repairing locomotives, or in sarcastically seizing a 'Secesh' newspaper and reëditing it with a storm of fun and piquancy such as its doleful columns never witnessed of old.
"In storms the sailors had to put on the hatches and seal tight the openings into the infernal cesspool." The terrible revolt of the slaves in the West Indies, beginning in 1781, gave the growing anti-slavery sentiment an immense impetus. It also gave the slave owners pause. The cotton-gin had not yet been invented. Slavery was on a shifty economic basis in the South.
Since the Revolution, South Carolina had never been satisfied, and had never had reason to be. The cotton-gin had appeased her for a while, but had not suspended the operation of the causes which produced the stagnation of the South.
A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot. The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us.
It is certain that Negroes, who did most of the mechanical work in the South before the Civil War, made more than one suggestion for the improvement of machinery. We have already referred to the strong claim put forth by a member of the race for the real credit of the cotton-gin.
The business prospered, receiving a great impetus from the invention of the cotton-gin, and Slater's wealth increased rapidly. He had, on more than one occasion, visited the south and seen the negroes at work in the cotton fields.
They were the stable and good horses there were in that stable; the cow-house, for milk cattle; the barn, to hold the wheat and maize-corn; the smoke-house, for curing bacon; a large building for the dry tobacco; a cotton-gin, with its shed of clap-boards; bins for the husk fodder, and several smaller structures.
By 1800 cotton had proved itself a staple for the Southern States, and even the second war with England hardly hindered the planters. In 1791 two million pounds had been raised; in 1804 forty-eight million; the invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793, stimulating to the utmost the enthusiasm of the South over this new road to fortune.
The cotton-gin, the steam-engine, the sewing-machine, and the reaping-machine would never have been invented in a nation of boors. It is not asserted that every boy who goes to school will become an inventor.
Greene had the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty pounds of cotton per day. This solution of the last problem in cheap cotton-culture made it at once the leading crop of the South.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking