Eli Whitney who is he and was he done?
Eli Whitney is a inventor who used the knowledge that came with the industrial and scientific revolutions to revolutionize manufacturing and production. He is what some would call a applied scientist taking theories and applying it to everyday life and others might call him a war profiteer. He is called a war profiteer by me because he is the father of the modern day military industrial contract. He presented to congress interchangeable parts for some 18 guns assembling and disassembling them by himself he then received funding from congress to continue his work in producing the weapons. He started a process of mass producing weapons a factor that helped the north overwhelm the south. But before he began to build the infrastructure necessary to mass produce weapons Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin an invention which some historians argue gave new life to the dwindling slave trade. So to sum it all up Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin a machine that processed cotton much faster. This led the slave trade to become even more profitable making southerners even more militant about protecting their ethically questionable cash cow, And to top it all off Eli Whitney then pioneered the mass production of weapons using interchangeable parts. The north then tried to limit slavery which caused the already agitated south to completely secede from the union and the latter mentioned industry was then used to overwhelm the south and essentially blow everything to shreds. So did Eli Whitney solve slavery? Or did he indirectly lead to the biggest american blood bath?
I liked how you kept it concise and listed what he did in an understandable way. I like the flow of the paragraph as well.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you opened up the conversation of Whitney's role in American history to the reader. It is very interesting how, such a simple invention as the cotton gin, could have possibly triggered a resurgence of slavery and possibly helped divide the country on the issue. It seems to be that the cotton gin itself was more at fault for the renewed interest in slavery rather than Whitney himself. Whitney merely seemed to be using his ingenuity in order to aid the growing American economy in the Industrial Age; his cotton gin allowed for slavery to thrive again in the South. The cotton gin's effects on Southern society, politically, economically, and socially, would be an interesting concept to investigate. For more information on the effects of the cotton gin on the South and how this led to conflict between the North and the South, go to https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent
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