USA > Georgia > Stories of Georgia > Part 9
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ists who had lived in Georgia. This property was sold for the benefit of the public. In November of the , same year a new cession of land was obtained from the Creek nation by treaty. This was divided into the counties of Franklin and Washington, and the land distributed in bounties to the soldiers of the war.
It is worthy of note that about this time, when the State had hardly begun to recover from the effects of the war, the representatives of the people began to move in the matter of education. The Constitution of 1777 had declared that "schools shall be erected in each county, and supported by the general expense of the State." On the 3Ist of July, 1783, the Legis- lature appropriated one thousand acres of land to each county for the support of free schools. In 1784, a short time after the notification of the treaty of peace, the Legislature passed an act appropriating forty thou- sand acres of land for the endowment of a college or university. A year later the charter for this univer- sity was granted ; and the preamble of the act declares it to be the policy of the State to foster education in the most liberal way. It so happened that some of the provisions that had been made for public education were not carried out at once, and the people of the various settlements established schools of their own. Many of the best teachers of the country came to Georgia from the more northern States; and some of them won a reputation that has lasted to this day. Later, more than one of these teachers established schools that became famous all over the country. In
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this way the reign of the "old field schoolmaster " began, and continued for many years.
The people had been cultivating cotton on a small scale before 1791; but the staple was so difficult to handle, that the planting was limited. Those who grew it were compelled to separate the seed from
the lint by hand, and this was so tedious that few people would grow it. But in 1793, Eli Whitney, who was living on the plantation of General Greene, near Savannah, invented the cotton gin. The machine was a very awkward and cumbrous affair compared with the gins of the present day; but in that day and time, and for many years after, the Whitney was suf-
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ficient for the needs of the people. It was one of the most important inventions that have ever been made. It gave to the commerce of the world a staple com- modity that is in universal demand, and it gave to the people of the South their most valuable and important crop. But for this timely invention, the cultivation of cotton would have been confined to the narrowest limits. The gin proved to be practicable, and it came into use very quickly. The farmers prospered, and gradually increased the cotton crop.
The population also increased very rapidly. The rich lands were purchased and settled on by farmers from Virginia and the Carolinas. The colony that had been planted by Oglethorpe had never ventured very far from the seacoast. A few probably followed the course of the Savannah River, and made their homes in that region ; but the people brought over by Ogle- thorpe were not of the stuff that pioneers are made of. The experience they had undergone in the mother country had tamed them to such a degree that they had no desire to brave the future in the wilderness. Adventures of that kind were left for the hardy North Carolinians and Virginians who first settled what was then known as Upper Georgia. After the Revolution, this tide of immigration increased very rapidly, and it was still further swelled by the profits that the Whit- ney gin enabled the planters of Georgia to make out of their cotton crops.
The settling of Georgia began with the charitable scheme of Oglethorpe. The making of Georgia began when the North Carolinians and Virginians began to
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open up the Broad River region to the north of Augusta. It was due to the desperate stand taken by these hardy pioneers that Georgia continued the strug- gle for American independence. To Upper Georgia came some of the best families from Virginia and North Carolina, -the Grattons, the Lewises, the Clarkes, the Strothers, the Crawfords, the Reeses, the Harrises, the Andrewses, the Taliaferros (pronounced Tollivers), the Campbells, the Barnetts, the Toombses, the Doolys, and many other families whose names have figured in the history of the country. Here also settled James Jack, the sturdy patriot who volunteered to carry the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence to Philadel- phia. The Congress then in session chose to shut its eyes to that declaration, but it was the basis and framework of the Declaration afterwards written by Thomas Jefferson.
After the Revolution, when the Cherokees went on the warpath, the Virginia settlement was in a state of great alarm. Men, women, and children met together, and decided that it would be safer to camp in the woods in a body at night rather than run the risk of being burned to death in houses that they could not defend. They went into the depths of the woods and made an encampment. One night while they were around a fire, cooking their supper, suddenly the report of a gun was heard, and then there was a cry of " Indians !" The men seized their guns; but they hardly knew where to turn, or what to do. Suddenly a lad who had not lost his head emptied a bucket of water on the fire. This was the thing to do, but no one else had thought of it. The
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name of the lad was Meriwether Lewis. He went into the regular army, became the private secretary of Presi- dent Jefferson, and was selected to head the party that explored the Territory of Louisiana, which had been bought from France. Meriwether Lewis selected for his companion Captain Clark, an old army friend and comrade. Leading the party, Lewis and his friend Clark left St. Louis, and pushed westward to the Pacific coast, through dangers and obstacles that few men would have cared to meet. The famous expe- dition of Lewis and Clark has now become a part of the history of the country. Lewis took possession of the Pacific coast in the name of the United States. There was a controversy with Great Britain some years afterwards as to the title of Oregon, but that which Lewis and Clark had established was finally acknowl- edged to be the best.
Meriwether Lewis won a name in history because the opportunity came to him. His name is mentioned here because he was a representative of the men who settled Upper Georgia, - the men who kept the fires of liberty alive in the State, and who, after helping to conquer the British and the Tories, became the conquerors of the wilderness that lay to the west of them. From Wilkes, Burke, Elbert, and the region where Clarke and his men had fought, the tide of emigration slowly moved across the State, settling Greene, Hancock, Bald- win, Putnam, Morgan, Jasper, Butts, Monroe, Coweta, Upson, Pike, Meriwether, Talbot, Harris, and Muscogee counties.
Some of the more adventurous crossed the Chat-
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tahoochee into Alabama, and on into the great Missis- sippi Valley and beyond. Their descendants live in every part of the South; and Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas have had Georgians for their governors, and their senators and representatives in Congress, - men who were descended from the Virginia and North Caro- lina immigrants. One of the most brilliant of these was Mirabeau B. Lamar, scholar, statesman, and soldier, the president of Texas when that Territory had declared itself a free and an independent republic.
THE COTTON GIN.
B RIEF mention has been made of Whitney's inven- tion of the cotton gin. The event was of such world-wide importance that the story should be told here. Whitney, the inventor of the gin, was born in Massachu- setts in 1765, in very poor circumstances. While the War of the Revolution was going on, he was earning his living by making nails by hand. He was such an apt mechanic that he was able to make and save enough money to pay his way through Yale College, where he graduated in 1792. In that year he engaged himself to come to Georgia as a private tutor in the family of a gentleman of Savannah; but when he reached that city, he found that the place had been filled.
While in Savannah, Whitney attracted the attention of the widow of General Nathanael Greene, who lived at Mulberry Grove, on the river at no great distance from the city. Mrs. Greene invited the young man to make his home on her plantation. He soon found opportunity to show his fine mechanical genius, and Mrs. Greene became more interested in him than ever.
The story goes, that soon after the young man had established himself on the Mulberry Grove Plantation, several Georgia planters were dining with Mrs. Greene. During their conversation the difficulty of removing the
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seed from the cotton fiber was mentioned, and the sug- gestion was made that this might be done by machinery. At this Mrs. Greene mentioned the skill and ingenuity of young Whitney, and advised her guests that he should be given the problem to solve. This advice was followed. The planters had a talk with the young man, and explained to him the difficulty which they found in separating the seed from the lint.
At that time one pound of lint cotton was all that a negro woman could separate from the seed in a day ; and the more cotton the planters raised, the deeper they got in debt. The close of the war had found them in a state of the utmost poverty, so that they had been compelled to mortgage their lands in order to get money on which to begin business. Cotton was the only prod- uct of the farm for which there was any constant demand ; but, owing to the labor of separating the lint from the seed, it could not be raised at a profit. Thus, in 1791, the number of pounds exported from the South to Europe amounted to only about 379 bales of 500 pounds each.
When the planters went to Whitney with their prob- lem, he was entirely ignorant of the whole matter. He knew nothing of cotton or of cotton planting ; but he at once set himself at work. He made a careful study of the cotton plant. He shut himself in a room with some uncleaned cotton, and worked at his task during a whole winter. He made his own tools at the plantation black- smith shop; and all day long, and sometimes far into the night, he could be heard hammering and sawing away.
In 1793 he called together the planters who had asked
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him to solve the problem, and showed them the machine, which he called a cotton gin. When they saw it work, their surprise and delight knew no bounds. They knew at once that the prob- lem had been solved by the young genius from Massachusetts. Little calculation was needed to show them that the cotton gin could clean as much cotton in a day as could be cleaned on a plantation during a whole winter. What be- 1,4 1 fore had been the work of a hundred hands for several months could now be completed in a few days.
But it seems to be NIF the fate of the majority of those who make won- derful inventions never to enjoy the full benefits of the work of their genius. Eli Whitney was not an exception to the general rule. While he was working on his cotton gin, rumors of it went abroad ; and by the time it was completed, public expectation was on tiptoe. When the machine was finished, it was shown to only a few people; but the fact, of such im-
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mense importance to the people of the State, was soon known throughout the State, and the planters impa- tiently waited for the day when they would be able to put it in use.
One night the building in which Whitney's cotton gin was concealed was broken into, ransacked, and the machine carried off. It was a bold robbery, and a very successful one. The inventor made haste to build another gin ; but before he could get his model completed, and obtain a patent right to the invention, the machine had been manufactured at various points in the South by other parties, and was in operation on several plantations. Whitney formed a partnership with a gentleman who had some capital, and went to Connecticut to manufacture his gin; but he was compelled to spend all the money he could make, fighting lawsuits. His patent had been infringed, and those who sought to rob him of the fruits of his labor took a bold stand. The result of all this was, that the inventor never received any just compensation for a machine that revolutionized the commerce of the coun- try, and added enormously to the power and progress of the Republic. Lord Macaulay said that Eli Whitney did more to make the United States powerful than Peter the Great did to make the Russian Empire domi- nant. Robert Fulton declared that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney were the three men that did more for mankind than any of their contemporaries. This is easy to believe, when we remember that while the South shipped 6 bags of cotton to England in 1786, and only 379 in 1791, ten years after the cotton gin
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came into use, 82,000 bales were exported. The very importance of Whitney's invention made it immensely profitable for the vicious and the depraved to seize and appropriate the inventor's rights. These robberies were upheld by those who were anxious to share in the profits; and political demagogues made themselves popular by misrepresenting Whitney, and clamoring against the law that was intended to protect him. It was only by means of this clamor, half political and wholly dishonest, that the plain rights of Whitney could be denied and justice postponed. His invention was entirely new. It was distinct from every other. It had no connection with and no relation to any other invention that had been made. It stood alone, and there could be no difficulty whatever in identifying it. And yet Whitney had just this difficulty. In his efforts to prove that he was the inventor of the cotton gin, and that he was entitled to a share of the immense profits that those who used it were reaping, he had to travel thousands of miles, and spend thousands of dollars in appearing before Legislatures and in courts that denied him justice. The life of his patent had nearly expired before any court finally enforced his right, and Congress refused to grant him an extension beyond the fourteen years that had then nearly expired.
Associations and combinations had been formed for the purpose of defrauding Whitney, and these were represented by the ablest lawyers that could be hired. It is no wonder that Whitney, in writing to Robert Fulton, a brother inventor, declared that the troubles he had to contend with were the result of a lack of
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desire on the part of mankind to see justice done. The truth is, his invention was of such prime impor- tance that the public fought for its possession, and justice and honesty were for the moment lost sight of. At one time but a few men in Georgia were bold enough to go into court and testify to the simplest facts within their knowledge; and Whitney himself says, that in one instance he had the greatest difficulty in proving that the machine had been used in Georgia, although at that very moment three separate gins were at work within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat. They were all so near, that the rattle and hum of the machinery could be heard from the court-house steps.
In December, 1807, a judge was found to affirm the rights of Whitney under his patent. The judge's name was Johnson ; and in his decision he said, " 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 capital has increased, and our lands have 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."
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The language of the learned judge was high-flown ; but he was a just judge, and he had a faint and glim- mering idea of the real importance of this remarkable invention. It was a very simple affair. The principle came to Whitney in a flash, and he had a model con- structed within ten days after the despairing planters had gone to him with their problem. But it may be doubted whether any other individual, by one simple invention, ever did so much for the progress and en- richment of human interests, and for the welfare and the comfort of the human race. This little machine made the agriculture of the South the strongest and the richest in the world, and gave to this section a political power that was for years supreme in the nation, and was only surrendered as the result of a long and exhausting war. By means of the cotton gin, towns and cities have sprung up, and a vast net- work of railways has been built ; and yet the most that Whitney received was a royalty on his gin in North Carolina, and a donation of fifty thousand dollars from the State of South Carolina. In Georgia his right to his invention was stolen, and all that he got out of it was a number of costly lawsuits.
After struggling for five years against the over- whelming odds that avarice and greed had mustered to aid them, Whitney turned his attention in another direction, and made a still more remarkable display of his genius. This part of his career does not belong directly to the history of Georgia, but it is interesting enough to be briefly recorded here. The United States Government was in want of arms, and this want various
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contractors had failed to meet. Through the influence of the secretary of the treasury, Whitney was given a contract to make ten thousand muskets at $13.40 apiece. He had no capital, no works, no machinery, no tools, no skilled workmen, no raw material. In creating a part of these and commanding the rest, he called into play an inventive genius, the extent of which must always excite wonder and admiration.
Within ten years he created his own works, and in- vented and made his own tools, invented and made his own machinery. More than this, he invented, and ap- plied a wholly new principle of manufacture, - a prin- ciple that has done more to advance human industry and increase wealth all over the world than any other known effort of the human mind to solve material problems. He invented and developed the principle or system of making the various parts of a musket or any other complex manufactured article, such as the sewing machine, so absolutely uniform as to be inter- changeable. This principle has been carried out in hundreds of thousands of different ways. It has entered into and become a feature of a vast range of manufactures. The principle was established by a series of inventions as wonderful as any that the human mind ever conceived, so that Whitney has been aptly called the Shakespeare of invention. His inventions remain practically unchanged. After ninety years of trial, they are found to be practically perfect.
It was his peculiar gift to be able to convey into inanimate machinery the skill that a human being could acquire only after years of study and practice.
STO. OF GA. - II
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It is almost like belittling the greatest of marvels to call it a stroke of genius. He made it possible for the most ordinary laborer to accomplish a hundred times as much in an hour, and with the most exquisite perfec- tion, as a skilled laborer could accomplish in a day.
On these wonderful inventions Whitney took out no patents. He gave them all to the public. In this way he revenged himself on those who had successfully robbed him of the fruits of his labor and genius in the invention of the cotton gin. Perhaps if he had been more justly treated in Georgia, he might have set up his works in this State, and this fact might have made the South the seat of great manufacturing industries. Who knows ?
SOME GEORGIA INVENTIONS.
T HE credit of inventing the steamboat is by general consent given to Robert Fulton. Every school- boy is taught that such is the case, and yet the fact is at least very doubtful. There is preserved among the papers in the Archives of Georgia a document that indicates, that, while Robert Fulton has won the credit for an invention that has revolutionized the commerce of the world, the real inventor may have been William Longstreet of Augusta, an uncle of General James B. Longstreet, and the father of Judge A. B. Longstreet, author of "Georgia Scenes." On the 26th of Septem- ber, 1790, William Longstreet sent the following letter to Edward Telfair, who was then governor of Georgia :-
SIR, - I make no doubt but you have heard of my steamboat and as often heard it laughed at. But in this I have only shared the fate of all other projectors, for it has uniformly been the custom of every country to ridicule even the greatest inventions until use has proved their utility.
My not reducing my scheme to practice has been a little un- fortunate for me, I confess, and perhaps for the people in general, but until very lately I did not think that either artists or material could be had in the place sufficient. However, necessity, that grand science of invention, has furnished me with an idea of per- fecting my plans almost entirely with wooden materials, and by such workmen as may be got here, and from a thorough confidence of its success, I have presumed to ask your assistance and patronage.
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Should it succeed agreeable to my expectations, I hope I shall dis- cover that source of duty which such favors always merit, and should it not succeed, your reward must lay with other unlucky adventurers.
For me to mention to you all the advantages arising from such a machine would be tedious, and, indeed, quite unnecessary. Therefore I have taken the liberty to state in this plain and humble manner my wish and opinion, which I hope you will excuse, and I will remain, either with or without approbation,-
Your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servant,
WILLIAM LONGSTREET,
There are two features of this letter that ought to attract attention. One is that William Longstreet has the name of " steamboat " as pat as if the machine were in common use. The second is his allusion to the fact that his conception of a boat to be propelled by steam was so well known as to be noised abroad.
Credit is sometimes given to John Fitch, who, it is said, invented a boat propelled by steam, that carried passengers on the Delaware River in 1787. An Eng- lishman named Symington is said to have run a steam- boat in 1801, while Robert Fulton's success was delayed until 1806. All these men have received credit for their efforts to benefit humanity, but history is silent in regard to William Longstreet. In one book about Georgia the remark is made that " James Longstreet is said to have invented the steamboat in 1793," but in this instance neither the name nor the date is correct.
In old St. Paul's churchyard in Augusta there is a tombstone which bears the inscription, " Sacred to the memory of William Longstreet, who departed this life September 1, 1814, aged 54 years, 10 months, and 26 days." Below this runs the pleasant legend, "All the
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days of the afflicted are evil, but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast." . We are thus left to infer that William Longstreet was a man of a merry heart; and that fact is certified to by the cleverness with which his son, the author of "Georgia Scenes," has preserved for us some of the quaint characters that lived and moved and had their being on the borders of Georgia society directly after the Revolution.
Being an inventor, a man of ingenious ideas, and some- what ambitious of serv- ing the public in that way, William Long- street certainly had need of. a merry heart ; for, as he himself says, the way of the pro- jector is hard. مدييا The term itself is used in Georgia to this day to express a certain sort of good-natured contempt. Go into the country places and ask after some acquaint- ance who has not prospered in a worldly way, and the answer will be, " Oh, he's just a prodjikin around."
It is certain that William Longstreet knew that steam could be used as a motive power long before it was so applied ; and because he employed a good deal of his time, in trying to discover the principle, he was ridiculed by his neighbors and friends, and the more thoughtless among them didn't know whether he was a crank, a half-
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wit, or a "luny." From all accounts, he was a modest, shy, retiring man, though a merry one. He had but little money to devote to the experiments he wished to make, and in this was not different from the great majority of inventors.
For a long time Longstreet's zeal and enthusiasm attracted the attention of a few of his wealthy friends, and these furnished him such money as he wanted; but no very long time was needed to convince those who were spending their money that the idea of propelling a boat by steam, instead of by sails or oars, was ridicu- lous. Longstreet made many experiments, but he had not hit upon the method of applying the principle he had in mind : consequently his rich friends closed their purses, and left him entirely to his own resources. A newspaper publication, in giving some of the facts in regard to Longstreet's efforts, says that he and his steamboat were made the subject of a comic song :-
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