the worth of the thing; but it is securing something. It will enable Miller & Whitney to pay all their debts, and divide something between them. It establishes a precedent which will be valuable as it respects our collections in other States, and I think there is now a fair prospect that I shall in the event realize property enough to render me comfortable, and, in some measure, independent."

He was mistaken. The next Legislature of South Carolina nullified the contract, suspended payment on the thirty thousand still due, and instituted a suit for the recovery of the twenty thousand that had been already paid! The pretenses on which this remarkable course was taken are more fully set forth in the action of the Legislature of Georgia in 1803, based on a Message from the governor, urging the inexpediency of granting any thing to Miller & Whitney. The Committee to whom this matter was referred, made a report, in which they—

"cordially agreed with the governor in his observations, that monopolies are at all times odious, particularly in free governments, and that some remedy ought to be applied to the wound which the Cotton-Gin monopoly has given, and will otherwise continue to give, to the culture and cleaning of that precious and increasing staple. They

have examined the Rev. James Hutchinson, who declares that Edward Lyon, at least twelve months before Miller & Whitpey's machine was brought into view, had in possession a saw or cotton-gin, in minia

ture, of the same construction; and it fur

ther appears to them, from the information of Doctor Cortes Pedro Dampiere, an old and respectable citizen of Columbia county,

that a machine of a construction similar to

that of Miller & Whitney, was used in Switzerland at least forty years ago, for the purpose of picking rags to make lint and paper."

This astonishing Committee closed their report with the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the Senators and Representatives of this State in Congress be, and they hereby are, instructed to use their utmost endeavors to obtain a modification

of the act, entitled, 'An act to extend the privileges of obtaining Patents for useful discoveries and inventions, to certain persons therein mentioned, and to enlarge and define the penalties for violating the rights of patentees,' so as to prevent the operation of it to the injury of that most valuable staple, cotton, and the cramping of genius in improvements on Miller & Whitney's patent Gin, as well as to limit the price of obtaining a right of using it, the price at present being unbounded, and the planter and poor artificer altogether at the mercy of the patentees, who may raise the price to any sum

they please.

"And, in case the said Senators and Re

presentatives of this State shall find such modification impracticable, that they do then use their best endeavors to induce Congress, from the example of other nations, to make compensation to Miller & Whitney for their discovery, take up the patent right, and release the Southern States from so burthensome a grievance."

North Carolina, to her honor be it recorded, in December, 1802, negotiated an arrangement with Mr. Whitney, whereby the legislature laid a tax of two shillings and sixpence upon every saw employed in ginning cotton, to be continued for five years, which sum was to be collected by the sheriffs in the same manner as the public taxes; and, after deducting the expenses of collection, the avails were faithfully paid over to the patentee. The old North State was not extensively engaged in cotton-growing, and the pecuniary avails of this action were probably not large; but the arrangement seems to have been a fair one, and it was never repudiated. South Carolina, it should in justice be said, through her legislature of 1804, receded from her repudiation, and fulfilled her original contract.

Mr. Miller, the partner of Whitney, died, poor and embarrassed, on the 7th of December, 1803. At the term of the United States District Court for Georgia, held at Savannah

in December, 1807, Mr. Whitney obtained a verdict against the pirates on his invention; his patent being now in the last year of its existence. Judge Johnson, in entering judgment for the plaintiff, said:

"With regard to the utility of this discov

ery, the court would deem it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who hears us, who has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for want of some object to engage their attention, and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age, it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed with poverty,

and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid off. Our capitals have increased,

and our lands trebled themselves in value.

We cannot express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot now be seen.

Some faint presentiment may be formed from the reflection that Cotton is rapidly supplanting Wool, Flax, Silk, and even Furs, in manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use of specie in our East India trade. Our sister States also participate in the benefits of this invention; for, beside affording the raw material for their manufacturers, the bulkiness and quantity of the article afford a valuable employment for their shipping."

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

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thousand millions of dollars to the Slave States of this country, is to place a very moderate estimate on its value. Mr. Whitney petitioned Congress, in 1812, for a renewal of his patent, setting forth the costly and embarrassing struggles he had

been forced to make in defense of his right, and observing that he had been unable to obtain any decision on the merits of his claim until he had been eleven years in the law, and until thirteen of the fourteen years' lifetime of his patent had expired. But the immense value of his invention

stood directly in the way of any such acknowledgment of its merits and his righteous claims as the renewal he sought would have involved. Some liberal members from the cotton-growing region favored his petition, but a majority of the Southrons fiercely opposed it, and it was lost.

Mr. Whitney, in the course of a correspondence with Robert Fulton, inventor of the first successful steamboat, remarks:

contend have originated, principally, in the want of a disposition in mankind to do justice. My invention was new and distinct from every other: it stood alone. It was not interwoven with anything before known; and it can seldom happen that an invention or improvement is so strongly marked, and can be so clearly and specifically identified; and I have always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected, if it had been less valuable, and been used only by a small portion of the community. But the use of this machine being immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton districts, all were interested in trespassing upon the patent right, and each kept the other in countenance. Demagogues made themselves popular by misrepresentation and unfounded clamors, both against the right and the law made for its protection. Hence there arose associations and combinations to oppose both. At one time, but few men in Georgia dared to come into court and testify to the most sim

"The difficulties with which I have had to

In 1798, Mr. Whitney, despairing of ever achieving a competence from the proceeds of his cottongin, engaged in the manufacture of arms, near New Haven; and his rare capacity for this or any similar undertaking, joined with his invincible perseverance and energy, was finally rewarded with success. He was a most indefatigable worker; one of the first in his manufactory in the morning, and the last to leave it at night; able to make any implement or machine he required, or to invent a new one when that might be needed; and he ultimately achieved a competency. He made great improvements in the manufacture of firearms-improvements that have since been continued and perfected, until the American rifled musket of our day, made at the National Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, is doubtless the most effective and perfect weapon known to mankind. In 1817, Mr. Whitney, now fifty-two years old, found himself fully relieved from pecuniary embarrassments and the harassing anxieties resulting therefrom.

• The inventor of the cotton-gin is not deemed worthy of even the slightest distinct biographical notice in the Encyclopædia Britannica. The only, and not very accurate, allusion to him that I have been able to find in that immense work, is as follows:

"The Upland Cotton is a different species from the Sea Island, and is separated with such difficulty from the seed, that the expense of cleaning the wool must have put a stop to its further cultivation, had not a machine, by which

He was now married to Miss Henrietta F. Edwards, daughter of the Hon. Pierpont Edwards, United States District Judge for Connecticut; and four children, a son and three daughters, were born to him in the next five years. In September, 1822, he was attacked by a dangerous and painful disease, which, with alternations of terrible suffering and comparative ease, preyed upon him until January 8, 1826, when he died, not quite sixty years of age.

The African Slave-Trade, so far as it had any legal or tolerated existence, was peremptorily closed, as we have seen, on the 1st day of January, 1808.

This was the period from which, according to the fond anticipations of optimists and quietists, Slavery in our country should have commenced its decadence, and thence gone steadily and surely forward to its ultimate and early extinction. And these sanguine hopes were measurably justified by the teachings of history. In all former ages, in all other countries, Slavery, so long as it existed and flourished, was kept alive by a constant or frequent enslavement of captives, or by importations of bondmen. Whenever that enslavement, that importation, ceased, Slavery began to decline. The gratitude of masters to faithful, devoted servants, who had nursed them in ill

the operation of cleaning is easily and successfully accomplished, been invented. This machine was invented in 1795, by Mr. Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts. There are two qualities of this cotton, the one termed Upland Georgia, grown in the States of Georgia and South Carolina, and the other of superior quality, raised upon the banks of the Mississippi, and distinguished in the market by the name of New Orleans cotton," &c., &c.—Encyclopædia Britannica, Eighth (last) Edition, vol. vii., p. 447 .

Truly, the world knows little of its greatest men.

to grow; while the nearly simultaneous inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and others, whereby steam was applied to the propulsion of machinery admirably adapted to the fabrication of Cotton, secured the cultivators against all reasonable apprehension of a permanently glutted market. As the production was doubled, and even quadrupled, every few years, it would sometimes seem that the demand had been exceeded; and two or three great commercial convulsions gave warning that even the capacity of the world's steadily expanding markets could be over-estimated and surpassed by the producers of Cotton and its various fabrics. But two years at most sufficed to clear off the surplus and enlarge this steadily growing demand up to the full measure of the momentarily checked production. The five millions of bales, produced by the United States in 1859-60, were sold as readily and quickly as the one million bales produced in 1830-31, and at considerably higher prices per pound.

But the relatively frigid climate and superficially exhausted soil of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina-wherein the greater number of slaves were originally held-were poorly, or not at all, adapted to the production of cotton, whereof slavelabor early claimed, and succeeded in substantially maintaining, a monopoly. No other out-door work

8 James Hargreaves had invented the Spinning-Jenny in 1764; this was supplanted by the invention by Sir Richard Arkwright, in 1768, of a superior machine for spinning cotton thread. James Watt patented his Steam Engine in 1769, and his improvement, whereby a rotary motion was produced, in 1782; and its first application

uniform employment for this description of labor. Throughout the greater part of the South-West, plowing for the cotton-crop may be commenced in January; to be followed directly by planting; this by weeding; and hardly has the cultivation of the crop been completed when the picking of the more advanced bolls may be commenced; and this, with ginning, often employs the whole force of the plantation nearly or quite up to the commencement of the Christmas holidays. These being over, the preparation of the fields for plowing is again commenced; so that there is no season when the hands need stand idle; and, though long spring and summer rains, impeding tillage while impelling the growth of weeds and of grass, sometimes induce weeks of necessary hurry and unusual effort, there is absolutely no day of the year wherein the experienced planter or competent overseer cannot find full employment for his hands in some detail of the cultivation of Cotton.

The forest-covered and unhealthy, but facile and marvelously fertile, South-West hungered for slaves, as we have seen evinced in the case of Indiana Territory. Impoverished, but salubrious and corn-growing Maryland, Virginia, etc., were ready to supply them. Enterprising, adventurous whites, avaricious men from the North and from Europe, but still more from the older Slave States, hied to the South-West, in hot pur

to cotton-spinning occurred in 1787, but it was many years in winning its way into general use. John Fitch's first success in steam navigation was achieved in 1786. Fulton's patents were granted in 1809-11, and claimed the simple means of adapting paddle-wheels to the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.