Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Seeing the need of some machine for the more rapid separating of cotton-seed from the fiber, he labored until in 1793 he succeeded in making his cotton-gin of practical value. The tradition is persistent, however, that the real credit of the invention belongs to a Negro on the plantation. The cotton-gin created great excitement throughout the South and began to be utilized everywhere.
And it was this same grandiose class that plundered Whitney of the fruits of his invention of the cotton-gin and shamelessly defrauded him. Far more flagrant, however, were the means by which other Southern plantation owners and business firms secured landed estates in Alabama, Georgia and in other States.
This was the state of affairs in 1793, when Eli Whitney, a New England mechanic, at this time residing in Savannah, Georgia, invented his cotton-gin, or a machine to separate seed and fibre. But with this increase of the cotton culture the value of slave property was augmented. Slavery grew and spread. In 1818 to 1821 it first became a factor in politics during the Missouri compromise.
Many people then believed that slavery would by degrees die out of the land, and perhaps this would have happened if the growing of cotton had not been made profitable by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin. After that invention came into use, instead of slavery's dying out, it took a much stronger hold upon the planters of the South than it had ever done before.
My early childhood was uneventful, save during the year 1882, when, by reason of the breaking of the Mississippi River levee near my home, I was compelled, together with my parents, to live six months in the plantation cotton-gin, fed by the Federal Government and by the determination never to live so close to the "Big Muddy" again; and during 1886, in which year my mother died.
She sees again the great clean-swept seed-cotton room of a cotton-gin house belonging to a cousin of the ex-governor, lighted with many candles stuck into a perfect wealth of black bottles ranged along the beams of the walls.
But by the use of the cotton-gin he could separate the seed from a thousand pounds in a single day. This, of course, meant that cotton could be sold for very much less than before, and hence there arose a much greater demand for it. It meant, also, that the labor of slaves was of more value than before, and hence there was a greater demand for slaves.
Eli Whitney contrived the cotton-gin in 1792, and some years later the machinery for the manufacture of fire-arms, involving the principle of absolute uniformity in the pattern of each part, so that any injured or missing portion of a gun may be instantly supplied without special fitting. We claim to have done our full share in the way of industrial inventions since we have become a nation.
Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis on which our fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer why they could not let it remain where the fathers of the Government originally placed it.
He had invented a machine for the cleaning of the hemp, which, considering the education and circumstances of the inventor, displayed quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney's cotton-gin. He was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a general favourite in the factory.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking