in 1666, the growth of the cotton-plant is on record. The cultivation slowly and fitfully expanded throughout the following century, extending northward to the eastern shore of Maryland and the southernmost point of New Jersey-where, however, the plant was grown more for ornament than use. It is stated that "seven bags of cotton-wool" were among the exports of Charleston, S. C., in 1748, and that trifling shipments from that port were likewise made in 1754 and 1757. In 1784, it is recorded that eight bags, shipped to England, were seized at the custom-house as fraudulently entered, "cotton not being a production of the United States." 5. The export of 1790, as returned, was eighty-one bags; and the entire cotton crop of the United States at that time was probably less than the product of some single plantation in our day. For, though the plant grew luxuriantly and produced abundantly throughout tide-water Virginia and all that. portion of our country lying southward and southwestward of Richmond, yet the enormous labor required to separate the seed from the tiny handful of fibres wherein it was imbedded, precluded its extensive and profitable cultivation. 6. It was calculated that the perfect separation of one pound of fibre from the seed was an average day's work; and this fact presented a formidable barrier to the production of the staple in any but a region like India, where labor can be hired for a price below the cost of subsisting slaves, however wretchedly, in this country. It seemed that the limit of American cotton cultivation had been fully reached, when an event occurred which speedily revolutionized the industry of our slave holding States and the commerce and manufactures of th world. (This was the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney.)... 7. Mr. Whitney graduated from Yale College in 1792, and directly engaged with a Mr. B., from Georgia, to proceed to that State and reside in his employer's family as a private teacher. On his way thither, he had as a travelling companion Mrs. Greene, widow of the eminent Revolutionary general, Nathaniel Greene, who was returning with her children to Savannah after spending the summer at the North. His health being infirm on his arrival at Savannah, Mrs. Greene kindly invited him to the hospitalities of her residence until he should become fully restored. Short of money and in a land of strangers, he was now coolly informed by his employer that his services were not required, he (Mr. B.) having employed another teacher in his stead! 8. Mrs. Greene hereupon urged him to make her house his home so long as that should be desirable, and pursue under her roof the study of the law, which he then contemplated. He gratefully accepted the offer, and commenced the study accordingly. Mrs. Greene happened to be engaged in embroidering on a peculiar frame known as a tambour". It was badly constructed, so that it injured the fabric while it impeded its production. Mr. Whitney eagerly volunteered to make her a better one, and did so on a plan wholly new, to her great delight and that of her children. 9. A large party of Georgians, from Augusta and the plantations above, soon after paid Mrs. G. a visit, several of them being officers who had served under her husband in the Revolutionary War. Among the topics discussed by them around her fireside was the depressed state of agriculture, and the impossibility of profitably extending the culture of the greenseed cotton, because of the trouble and expense incurred in separating the seed from the fibre. These representations impelled Mrs. Greene to say: "Gentlemen, apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney-he can make anything." 10. She thereupon took them into an adjacent room, where she showed them her tambour-frame and several ingenious toys which Mr. W. had made for the gratification of the children. She then introduced them to Whitney himself, extolling his genius and commending him to their confidence and friendship. In the conversation which ensued, he observed that he had never seen cotton nor cotton-seed in his life. He promised nothing, and gave but little encouragement, but went to work. 11. No cotton in the seed being at hand, he went to Sava nah, and searched there among warehouses and boats until he found a small parcel. This he carried home and secluded with himself in a basement-room, where he set himself to work to devise and construct the implement required. Tools being few and rude, he was constrained to make better-drawing his own wire, because none could, at that time, be bought in the city of Savannah. Mrs. Greene and her next friend, Mr. Miller, whom she soon after married, were the only persons beside himself who were allowed the entrée of his workshopin fact, the only ones who clearly knew what he was about. His mysterious hammering and tinkering in that solitary cell were subjects of infinite curiosity, marvel, and ridicule among the younger members of the family. But he did not interfere with their merriment nor allow them to interfere with his enterprise; and, before the close of the winter, his machine was so nearly completed that its success was no longer doubtful. 12. Mrs. Greene, too eager to realize and enjoy her friend's triumph, in view of the existing stagnation of Georgian indus try, invited an assemblage at her house of leading gentlemen from various parts of the State, and on the first day after their meeting, conducted them to a temporary building, erected for the machine, in which they saw, with astonishment and delight, that one man, with Whitney's invention, could separate more cotton from the seed in a single day than he could without it by the labor of months. ... 13. Reports of the nature and value of Whitney's invention were widely and rapidly circulated, creating intense excitement. Multitudes hastened from all quarters to see his original machine; but no patent having yet been secured, it was deemed unsafe to gratify their curiosity; so they broke open the building by night, and carried off the wonderful prize. Before he could complete his model and secure his patent, a number of imitations had been made and set to work, deviating in some respects from the original, in the hope of thus evading all penalty. . . . 14. Mr. Whitney's patent expired in 1808, leaving him a poorer man,* doubtless, than though he had never listened to the suggestions of his friend, Mrs. Greene, and undertaken the invention of a machine, by means of which the annual production of cotton in the Southern States has been augmented from some five or ten thousand bales in 1793, to over five millions of bales, or one million tons, in 1859; this amount being at least three-fourths in weight, and seven-eighths in value, of all the cotton produced on the globe. To say that this invention was worth one thousand millions of dollars to the slave States of this country, is to place a very moderate estimate on its value. Fulton and his First Steamboat.-Story. [Extract from a discourse delivered in Boston, November, 1829, by Joseph Story.] 1. THE history of the steam-engine is full of instruction. The Marquis of Worcester, early in the reign of Charles II. (1655), first directed the attention of the public to the expansive power of steam when used in a close vessel; and of its capacity to be employed as a moving power in machinery. The suggestion slept almost without notice, until about the year 1698, when Captain Savary, a man of superior ingenuity, constructed an apparatus, for which he obtained a patent, to apply it to practical purposes. The invention of a safety-valve soon afterward followed; and that again was succeeded by the use of a closefitted piston working in a cylinder. 2. Still, however, the engine was comparatively of little use, until Mr. Watt, a half century afterward, effected the grand improvement of condensing the steam in a separate vessel, communicating by a pipe with the cylinder; and Mr. Washbrough, in 1778, by the application of it to produce a rotary motion, opened the most extensive use of it for mechanical purposes. 3. It was in reference to the astonishing impulse thus given * This arose from the difficulty of establishing his claim to the invention, and the impossibility of obtaining justice from the courts and legislatures of the States immediately interested in the ma chine. Mr. Whitney never succeeded in obtaining any considerable recompense from his valuable invention; but subsequently made great improvements in the construction of fire-arms, from which he finally obtained a competence. to mechanical pursuits, that Dr. Darwin, more than forty years ago, broke out in strains, equally remarkable for their poetical enthusiasm and prophetic truth, and predicted the future triumph of the steam-engine: "Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud." 4. What would he have said if he had but lived to witness the immortal invention of Fulton, which seems almost to move in the air, and to fly on the wings of the wind? And yet how slowly did this enterprise obtain the public favor! I myself have heard the illustrious inventor relate, in an animated and affecting manner, the history of his labors and discouragements. When, (said he), I was building my first steamboat* at New York, the project was viewed by the public critics with indifference, or with contempt, as a visionary scheme. My friends, indeed, were civil, but they were shy. They listened with patience to my explanations, but with a settled cast of incredulity on their countenances. I felt the full force of the lamentation of the poet: "Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand." 5. As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the buildingyard, while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered unknown near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, or sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense; the dry jest; the wise calculation of losses and expenditures; the dull but endless repetition of the "Fulton Folly." Never did a * The Clermont, in which he made the first trip to Albany, by steam, in 1807. |