Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

CHAPTER V
THE COTTON GIN—How THE CURRENTS OF AMERICAN HISTORY, POLITI
CAL AND ECONOMIC, WERE DESTINED TO BE AFFECTED BY THIS
INVENTION—ITS EFFECT UPON THE SOUTH—PRIOR TO THIS TIME,
COTTON AN UNIMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE INDUSTRIAL LIFE OF
THE WORLD—ONLY 399 BALES EXPORTED FROM THE UNITED
STATES IN 1791—SEA-!SLAND COTTON—UPLAND COTTON—ELI WHIT-
NEY, A NEW ENGLANDER, IN 1793, A GUEST OF GENERAL GREENE'S
WIDOW AT MULBERRY GROVE, NEAR SAVANNAH—CIRCUMSTANCES
WHICH LED WHITNEY TO INVENT THE COTTON GIN—AN AUTHENTIC
ACCOUNT—WHITNEY's SUBSEQUENT CAREER—ESTABLISHES A COTTON
GIN IN WILKES COUNTY, Six MILES FROM WASHINGTON—KEEPS THE
PROCESS OF GINNING A SECRET, BUT A MAN DISGUISED IN FEMALE
ATTIRE ENTERS THE GINNERY AND MAKES IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES—
EIVALS CLAIMANTS—LAW SUITS OVER PATENT. RIGHTS—WHITNEY
REAPS LITTLE PROFIT OUT OF AN INVENTION A¥HICH WAS DESTINED
TO FURNISH APPAREL FOR HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE AND TO RULE
THE INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES OF THE GLOBE.
NOTES : WHERE AN IMPORTANT BATTLE WAS FOUGHT.
'' Behold, in endless sheets, unroll
The snow of southern summer."
Thus sang the poet Timrod. Half of the human race is today clothed
with fabrics spun from the South's royal staple, cotton, a product far
richer in its intrinsic value than the golden fleece for which Jason went
in search. Today cotton rules an empire broader in extent than the one
over which hovered the imperial eagles of Rome. But, without a modest
device for separating the lint from the seed, invented by Eli Whitney,
in 1793, cotton might still be an Ishmaelite of the fields, an utterly worth
less weed, with no part to play in the world's affairs, with no value as a
commodity in the world's market.
Before the cotton gin was invented eight bags of cotton shipped to
England in 1784 were seized on the ground that so much cotton could
not be produced in the United States.* To quote the same authority
from which we derive this statement, sea-island cotton was first raised
on the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed for this purpose having been
obtained from the Bahama Islands. Two years later, Alexander Bissell,
of St. Simon's, began to export sea-island cotton to England. The use
of cotton, in the manufacture of cloth, on a somewhat crude scale, is
credited by traditional accounts to a remote origin, but until compara-
* "History of Georgia," L. B. Evans, p. 139.
372