Eli Whitney Patents Cotton-Gin

His claims were disputed and he defended them in the State and Federal courts for nearly a generation.

Continuing Enormous Growth of Cotton in America,
with a selection from The Cotton Plant (a Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, Volume 33) by Robert B. Handy published in 1896. This selection is presented in 5 installments, each one 5 minutes long. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Enormous Growth of Cotton in America.

Donnell says: “The first regular exportation of cotton from Charleston was in 1785, when one bag arrived at Liverpool, per ship Diana, to John and Isaac Teasdale & Co. The exportation of cotton from the United States could not have been much earlier, for we find in 1784 eight bags shipped to England were seized on the ground of fraudulent importation, as it was not believed that so much cotton could be produced in the United States.”

The exportation during the next six years was successively 6, 14, 109, 389, 842, and 81 bags.

Dana gives the following data concerning the export movement from 1739 to 1793:

• “1739. Samuel Auspourguer, a Swiss living in Georgia, took over to London, at the time of the controversy about the introduction of slaves, a sample of cotton raised by him in Georgia. This we may call, in the absence of a better starting-point, the first export.
• “1747. During this year several bags of cotton, valued at £3 11s. 5d. per bag, were exported from Charleston. Doubts as to this being of American growth have been expressed, but as cotton had been cultivated in South Carolina for many years there does not seem to be any reason for such doubts. Besides, English writers mention it as an import of Carolina cotton.
• “1753. ‘Some cotton’ is mentioned among the exports of Carolina in 1753, and of Charleston in 1757.
• “1764. Eight (8) bags of cotton imported into Liverpool from the United States.
• “1770. Three (3) bales shipped to Liverpool from New York; ten (10) bales from Charleston; four (4) from Virginia and Maryland; and three (3) barrels from North Carolina.
• “1784. About fourteen (14) bales shipped to great Britain, of which eight (8) were seized as improperly entered. [See above.]
• “1785. Five (5) bags imported at Liverpool.
• “1786. Nine hundred (900) pounds imported into Liverpool.
• “1787. Sixteen thousand three hundred fifty (16,350) pounds imported into Liverpool.
• “1788. Fifty-eight thousand five hundred (58,500) pounds imported into Liverpool.
• “1789. One hundred twenty-seven thousand five hundred (127,500) pounds imported into Liverpool.
• “1790. Fourteen thousand (14,000) pounds imported into Liverpool. We can find no reason for this marked decline in the exports except it may be that the crop was a failure that year. Our first supposition was that the cause was one of price, but on examining the quotations in Took’s work on ‘high and low prices’ we do not see any marked decline in the values of other descriptions of cotton, and the American staple is not given in his list until 1793.
• “1791. One hundred eighty-nine thousand five hundred (189,500) pounds imported into Liverpool, the price averaging here 26 cents.
• “1792. One hundred thirty-eight thousand three hundred twenty-eight (138,328) pounds imported into Liverpool.”

Great difficulty was experienced in separating the seed from the lint of upland cotton. The work was done by hand, the task being four pounds of lint cotton per week from each head of a family, in addition to the usual field-work. This would amount to one bale in two years. A French planter of Louisiana (Dubreuil) is said to have invented a machine for separating lint and seed as early as 1742. The demand for such a machine not being very great at that date, no record as to its character has been preserved. The roller-gin, in very much the same form as Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, found it in India, was still in use. In 1790 Dr. Joseph Eve, originally from the Bahamas, but then a resident of Augusta, Georgia, made great improvements on this ancient machine, and adapted it to be run by horse- or water-power. A correspondent of the American Museum, writing from Charleston, South Carolina, in July of that year, states “that a gentleman well acquainted with the cotton manufacture had already completed and in operation, on the high hills of Santee, near Statesburg, ginning, carding, and other machines driven by water, and also spinning-machines with eighty-five spindles each, with every article necessary for manufacturing cotton.” A machine dating anterior to this year, and having a strong resemblance to the above, possessing in fact all the essentials of a modern cotton-gin, was exhibited at the Atlanta Exposition in 1882. It came from the neighborhood of Statesburg, but its history could not be ascertained.

In 1793 Eli Whitney petitioned for a patent for the invention of the saw cotton-gin. His claims were disputed, and he defended them in the State and Federal courts for nearly a generation, obtaining at last a verdict in his favor. Meanwhile the saw-gin had become an established fact, and the planter at last had a machine which enabled him to produce cotton at a cost that would leave him a good profit. The first saw-gin to be run by water-power was erected in 1795 by James Kincaid near Monticello, in Fairfield County, South Carolina. Others were put up near Columbia by Wade Hampton, Sr., in 1797, and in the year following he gathered and ginned from six hundred acres six hundred bales of cotton. The cotton exportation from the United States increased from four hundred eighty-seven thousand six hundred pounds in 1793 to one million six hundred thousand pounds in 1794, the year in which Whitney’s gin was patented. In 1796, a year after he had improved his machine, the production had risen to ten million pounds. In fact, the increased production was so great that the planters began to fear they would overstock the market, and one of them, upon looking at his newly gathered crop, exclaimed: “Well, I have done with cultivation of cotton; there’s enough in that gin-house to make stockings for all the people in America.” Yet the production of cotton did not advance with that rapidity to which we are now accustomed.

The cotton industry being of secondary importance prior to 1790, information and statistics relative to the amount produced are not available, but within one hundred years, from 1790 to 1890, the production of cotton in the United States increased from five thousand bales to over ten million bales.

The first cotton-mill erected in the United States was built at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787-1788. This was soon followed by others in various towns along the east border of the country, especially Pawtucket and Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; New Haven and Norwich, Connecticut; New York City; Paterson, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Statesburg, South Carolina. In them carding and spinning were done by machinery, but the weaving was on hand-looms until 1815, at which date a power-loom mill was started at Waltham, Massachusetts. The use of hand-looms and spinning-wheels for cotton manufacture was common in all parts of the country before the Revolution, especially in the Southern colonies, and these continued to be used by the women in their houses many years after the erection of cotton factories.

Charles W. Dabney begins here. Robert B. Handy begins here. Denison Olmsted begins here.

More information here and here, and below.

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