Eli Whitney was born in the small rural town of Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8th, 1765. He was born to Eli and Elizabeth Whitney and after a few years he became the oldest of three other siblings. When Eli Whitney was five years an unfortunate birth incident resulted in the loss of his would have been youngest brother, Josiah. In 1777, when Eli was twelve, his mother died and that end up with him having to take care of his two brothers and his sister while his father worked.

Even as a young boy Eli showed great promise with his skills with tools. As a young boy he liked to play with his fathers tools by fixing furniture around the house. Even as a youngster he was intrigued by his mechanical ability and felt he could do something important. While feeling that he was financially worthless to his family, he got permission from his father to setup his own forge. With the Revolutionary war going on at the time the was a shortage of basic building materials so in his forge he created nails with scrap metal thus creating a huge profit for him and his family. With this huge success he was able to provide an extra

Before the invention of this cotton gin, it took a very long time to separate the seeds from the cotton fibers by hand. Even while working extremely hard, a person (slave), could only clean, on average, a pound of cotton a day. The use of the cotton gin made it feasible to process the cotton crop much more quickly and much more economically. After the invention, one person could clean the seeds from fifty pounds of cotton in one day. The plantation owners had a big enough work force to quickly harvest the newly grown cotton but since there was no easy way to clean it, So the cotton gin was important because it made cotton a profitable crop. Just as carding, spinning, and weaving machines made it profitable to produce large amounts of cloth in factories, the cotton gin made it possible to grow large amounts of cotton on big farms called plantations. The northern factories were ready to accept as much raw cotton as the southern growers could ship them.

This division between morality ultimately led to another ripple in the pond caused by Whitney’s cotton gin. This division led to the separation of the churches. Protestant churches began to divide of the issue of slavery, each taking a side, free or slave. The churches that felt slaves should be free existed primarily in the North, and the Southern counterparts held no different view of theology, but instead divided over a moral issue. This furthered deepened the rift between North and South because now their was less of a bond between them. Not even religion held together the North and South and the conflict only escalated because of the lack of communication between both sides. Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin had started a revolution that divided the country, socially economically, politically, and now spiritually.

One of the most important events caused by the cotton gin was the exile of the Cherokee Indians along the Trail of Tears. As the demand for cotton and slaves grew the South began to look for more land, and discovered it in the land owned by the Cherokee Indians. The land was taken from them beginning in 1828 when the Georgia government outlawed the Cherokee government and began to take the land. This continued until 1838 when, despite a Supreme Court order, federal troops drove the last of the Cherokee from the land, that covered Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to Oklahoma where many of them died. This would not have occurred had it not been for the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin created a market for slavery. As the production of cotton rose so did the production of slavery. These enterprises needed land, which stimulated the wars against the Indians to take their land, which could then be used by cotton farmers, and plantation holders who bred slaves. Whitney’s cotton gin, and its ripple effect was having a major impact on the events in the American South.

In conclusion, the most important invention, and more importantly, the most important event between 1790 and 1850 was Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Its invention led to a rejuvenation in slavery breathing new life into the South, and in the country economy as a whole. With this rejuvenation came problems between North and South over moral differences. These differences created a rift that widened until sectionalism overtook nationalism. This rift was temporarily closed several times but ultimately the differences between North and South were so ingrained in their respective culture that it took a war to change. The wide and far-reaching effects of this event can be viewed as a pond, the country, when a pebble is thrown into it the ripples become larger and larger until they come in contact with something that can stop them. As the proverb says, “A butterfly that flaps its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Kansas.”

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