Eli Whitney

By 1790 slavery was on the decline in America. Apart from tobacco, rice, and a special strain of cotton that could be grown only in very few places, the South really had no money crop to export. Tobacco was a land waster, depleting the soil within very few years. Land was so cheap that tobacco planters never bothered to reclaim the soil by crop rotation -- they simply found new land farther west. The other crops …

…muskets were produced in the last two years. In 1811, Whitney took another order, this time for fifteen thousand. These were all produced in only two years. Whitney continued on with his development of the factory until his death on January 8, 1825. Unfortunately, Whitney has been all but forgotten. He is mostly remembered as "the cotton man," and nothing else. However, without the ingenuity and dedication of this individual, who knows where the world might be today.