noon. Her running time was thirty-two hours, which is at the rate of nearly five miles an hour. Returning immediately to New York, she performed the distance in thirty hours; exactly five miles an hour. The Clermont was immediately put upon the river as a packetboat, and plied between New York and Albany until the close of navigation, being always crowded with passengers. Enlarged during the winter, she resumed her trips in the spring of 1808, and continued to run with great success, and with profit to her owners. It was long, however, before the river boatmen were disposed to tolerate this new and terrible rival. At first, it is said, they fled in affright from the vicinity of the monster, fearing to be set on fire or run down by her. Afterwards, re gaining their courage, they made so many attempts to destroy her that the Legislature of the State passed a special act for her protection. Fulton devoted the rest of his life to the improvement of the steamboat. He lived to see the value of his labors universally recognized, and he acquired by them a considerable fortune. He died February 24th, 1815, aged fifty years, leaving a wife and four children, two of whom are still living in New York. He was able to leave his wife an income of nine thousand dollars a year, as well as five hundred dollars a year for each of his children till they were twelve years old, and a thousand dollars a year afterward till they were twenty-one. So, at least, runs his will, written a year before his death. His remains lie in Trinity Church-yard, in the city of New York. Robert Fulton was, in every respect, an honor to his country and his profession. Tall, handsome, and well-bred, he easily made friends, whose regard he retained by his sincerity, generosity, and good-humor. His crowning virtue was that indomitable resolution which enabled him to bear patiently the most cruel disappointments, and to hold calmly on his way till he had conquered a sublime success. ELI WHITNEY. ONE day, in the fall of 1792, when General Washington was President of the United States, a company of Georgia planters happened to be assembled at the house, near Savannah, of Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, widow of the famous General Greene, of the Revolution. Several of these planters had been officers under the command of the general, and they had called, naturally enough, to pay their respects to his widow. The conversation turned upon the depressed condition of the Southern States since the close of the war. The planters were generally in debt, their lands were mortgaged, their products afforded little profit, and many of the younger and more enterprising people were moving away. The cause of this state of things, these planters agreed, was the difficulty of raising cotton with profit, owing to the great labor required in separating the fibres of the cotton from the seeds. Many of our readers, we presume, have never seen cotton growing, nor even a boll, or pod, of cotton. This pod, which is about as large as a hen's egg, bursts when it is ripe, and the cotton gushes out at the top in a beautiful white flock. If you examine this flock closely, you discover that it contains eight or ten large seeds, much resembling, in size and shape, the seeds of a lemon. The fibres of the cotton adhere so tightly to the seeds, that to get one pound of clean cotton, without wasting any, used to require a whole day's labor. It was this fact that rendered the raising of cotton so little profitable, and kept the Southern States from sharing in the prosperity enjoyed by the States of the North, after the close of the Revolutionary war. When the gentlemen had been conversing for some time, the idea was started that perhaps this work could be done by a machine. Mrs. Greene then remarked: "Gentlemen, apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." Few words have ever been spoken on this globe, that have had such important and memorable consequences as this simple observation of Mrs. Nathaniel Greene. Eli Whitney, of whom she spoke, was a young Massachusetts Yankee, who had come to Georgia to teach, and, having been taken sick, had been invited by this hospitable lady to reside in her house till he should recover. He was the son of a poor farmer, and had worked his way through college without assistance as Yankee boys often do. From early boyhood he had exhibited wonderful skill in mechanics, and in college he used to repair the philosophical apparatus with remarkable nicety, to the great admiration of professors and students. During his residence with Mrs. Greene he had made for her an ingenious tambour-frame, on a new principle, as well as many curious toys for her children. Hence her advice: "Apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." She now introduced Mr. Whitney to her friends, who described to him the difficulties under which they labored. He told them he had never seen a pod of cotton in his life. Without giving them any promises, he resolved to procure some raw cotton forthwith, and see what he could do with it. Searching about the wharves of Savannah, he found, at length, some uncleaned cotton, and taking home a bundle of it in his hands, he shut himself up in a room in the basement, and set to work to invent the machine required. All the winter he labored in his solitary cell. There were no proper tools to be haċ in Savannah. He made his own tools. There was no wire. He made his own wire. The children, the servants, the visitors at the house, wondered what he could be doing in the basement all alone. But he said nothing, and kept on thinking, hammering, and tinkering, till, early in the spring of 1793, he had completed his work. Having set up the mysterious machine in a shed, he invited a number of planters to come and witness its operation. Its success was complete. The gentlemen saw, with unbounded wonder and delight, that one man, with this young Yankee's engine, could clean as much cotton in one day as a man could clean by hand in a whole winter. The cotton grown on a large plantation could be separated from the seed in a few days, which before required the constant labor of a hundred hands for several months. Thus was the cotton-gin invented. The principle was so simple that the wonder was that no one had thought of it before. The cotton was put into a large trough, the bottom of which was formed of wires placed in parallel rows, so close together that the seed could not pass through. Under this trough saws revolved, the teeth of which thrust themselves between the wires and snatched the cotton through, leaving the seed behind, which ran out in a stream at one end of the trough. The simplicity of the cotton-gin had two effects, one good, the other bad. The good effect was, that in the course of a very few years it was introduced all over the cotton States, increased the value of all the cotton lands, doubled and trebled the production of cotton, and raised the Southern States from hopeless depression to the greatest prosperity. The effect was as lasting as it was sudden. In 1793 the whole export of cotton from the United States was ten thousand bales. In 1859 the export was four millions of bales. Men acquainted with the subject are of opinion that that single invention has been worth to the South one thousand millions of dollars. How much dia the inventor gain by it? Not one dollar! Associating himself with a man of capital, he went to Connecticut to set up a manufactory of cotton-gins. But the simplicity of the machine was such, that any good mechanic who saw it could make one; and long before Whitney was ready to supply machines of his own making there were great numbers in operation all over the cotton States. His patent proved to be no protection to him. If he brought a suit for its infringement, no Southern jury would give him a verdict. He struggled on against adverse influences for fifteen years. In 1808, when his patent expired, he gave up the contest and withdrew from the business, a poorer man than he was on the day when he went, with his handful of cotton-pods, into Mrs. Greene's basement. Thousands of men were rich, who, but for his ingenuity and labor, would have remained poor to the end of their days. The levees of the Southern seaports were heaped high with cotton, which, but for him, would never have been grown. Fleets of cotton ships sailed the seas, which, but for him, would never have been built. He, the creator of so much wealth, returned to his native State, at the age of forty-two, to begin the world anew. But Eli Whitney was a thoroughbred Yankee,—one of those unconquerable men, who, balked in one direction, try another, and keep on trying till they succeed. He turned his attention to the improvement of fire-arms, particularly the old-fashioned musket. Having established a manufactory of fire-arms at New Haven, he prospered in business, and was enabled, at length, to gratify his domestic tastes by marrying the daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, with whom he lived in happiness the rest of his life. Some of the improvements which he invented are preserved in the celebrated Springfield musket, with which our soldiers are now chiefly armed. It was he who began the improvements in fire-arms which Colt and many others have continued, and which have given the United States the best muskets, the best pistols, and the best cannon in the world. Eli Whitney died in January, 1826, in his sixtieth year. It is a curious fact that the same man should have supplied the South with the wealth that tempted it to rebel, and the United States with the weapons with which it enforced its just authority. |