Cotton Becomes King

If you've ever tried to pick seeds from a cotton boll, you know what a difficult task it can be. The seeds are stuck inside, as if they had been glued there. Eli Whitney would change how the cotton seeds were handled and thereby the cotton business forever.

He had been born in Massachusetts, but decided to visit the South as a young man. On the voyage, he met the widow of the Revolutionary War hero, Nathanael Greene, and she invited Whitney to her Georgia plantation. Her fiance, Phineas Miller, was also a Northerner and would become Whitney's business partner.

While on the plantation, Whitney felt sorry for the many slaves who toiled in the cotton fields. When he saw how hard it was for them to extract the seeds from the cotton so it could be used, he decided to help them out. In 1793, he invented the cotton gin, which could pull the seeds out.

Although Whitney's intentions were good, some feel that he hurt the slaves instead of helping them. His invention allowed the planters to grow and sell much more cotton than ever before. It also made the slaves in the fields more necessary. As a result, slavery became even more entrenched into the economy of the South. Most of the Southern states began to consider "King Cotton" as an essential part of their success.

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