COTTON CULTURE. 155 



stated that cotton would grow as well in Virginia as in 

 Italy ; and in the very last part of that century, another 

 authority states that Sir Edmund Andros, while Governor 

 of Virginia, in 1692, " gave particular marks of his favor 

 towards the propagation of cotton, which, since his time, 

 has been much neglected." tip to the time of the Revo- 

 lutionary War, so little was raised that it deserves no 

 mention as one of the American exports. Within ten 

 years from the Declaration of Peace between the United 

 States and England, cotton culture received an amazing 

 impetus from the discovery, by Eli Whitney, of a rapid 

 and effectual mode of separating Upland cotton from 

 its seed. The manner in which the attention of young 

 Whitney was drawn to the invention of the cotton-gin is 

 a matter of so great interest that the folio wing brief 

 statement is copied from the memoir of Eli Whitney, writ- 

 ten by Professor Olmstead, of Yale College : 



" After leaving college, Mr. Whitney, who had already 

 distinguished himself for his mechanical skill, and for bold 

 and self-relying enterprise, almost immediately went to 

 the State of Georgia for the purpose of fulfilling his en- 

 gagement with a gentleman to reside in his family as a 

 private teacher." This was in the latter part of the year 

 1792. On his way to Savannah by ship, he had as a com- 

 panion of his voyage, the widow of the then late General 

 Greene, 'so distinguished in the annals of our revolutionary 

 history. On his arrival at Savannah, being but partially 

 recovered from the small pox, which he had by inoculation, 

 lie was invited by Mrs. Greene to spend a little time at her 

 residence at Mulberry Grove, near that city. He soon 

 learned that another teacher had been employed in the 

 place which he had expected. Mrs. Greene at once kindly 

 and generously proposed to him to commence the study 

 of the law under her hospitable roof, and to remain in her 

 family as long as he should choose. He had not been 

 long with her before he gave striking proofs of his mechan- 



