f 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."

The language of the learned judge was high-flown; but he was a just
judge, and he had a faint and glimmering 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 constructed 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 enrichment 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 network 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 overwhelming 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
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 c