If you went to elementary school in the United States, you no doubt learned about Eli Whitney’s cotton gin as an example of how the industrial revolution took previously manual processes and ...

click image for close-up In October of 1793, Eli Whitney sent a drawing of his new invention, the cotton gin, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in application for a patent. Jefferson replied ...

With the gin (short for engine ... In January 1800, free black people in Philadelphia petitioned Congress to end the trade. In the meantime, though, the cotton boom spurred slaves imported ...