224 Memoir of the Life of Eli Whatney. 
regarded by Mr. Whitney as more liberal, than that received from 
any other source. 
While these encouraging prospects were rising in North Carolina, 
Mr. Goodrich, the agent of the company, was entering into a similar 
negociation with the State of ‘Tennessee. The importance of the 
machine began to be universally acknowledged in that State, and 
various public meetings of the citizens were held, in which were 
adopted resolutions strongly in favor of a public contract with 
Miller & Whitney.* . Accordingly, the legislature of Tennessee « 
at their session in 1803, passed an act laying a tax of thirty seven 
cents and a half per annum on every saw for the period of four years. 
ut while a fairer day seemed dawning upon the company in this 
quarter, an unexpected and threatening cloud was rising in another. 
It was during Mr. Whitney’s negociation with the legislature of North 
Carolina, that he received intelligence that the legislature of South 
Carolina had annulled the contract made with Miller & Whitney the 
preceding year, had suspended payment of the balance (thirty thou- 
sand dollars) due them, and instituted a suit for the recovery of what 
had already been paid to them. 
The ostensible causes of this extraordinary measure, adopted by 
the legislature of South Carolina, were a distrust of the validity of the 
patent right, and failure on the part of the patentees to perform cel 
tain conditions agreed on in the contract. Great exertions had con- 
stantly been made in Georgia to impress the public with the notion, 
that Mr. Whitney was not the original, inventor of the cotton gin, some 
body in Switzerland having conceived the idea of it before him, and, 
especially, that he was not entitled to the credit of the invention In 18 
improved form, in which saws were used instead of wire teeth, mas 
much as his partticular form of the machine was introduced byonen 
gin Holmes. It was on these grounds, that the Governor of Georg! 
in his message to the legislature of that State in 1803, urged the inex 
pediency of granting any thing to Miller & Whitney. We have be 
fore us a copy of the report of the committee appointed on that pat 
of the Governor’s message, and since it will serve to show ! th the 
grounds and the character of the opposition, we will subjoi @ id 
extracts from it.- - 
* Of one of these meetings, General Jackson, now President of the United oo 
was chairman. mrpose 
t In adverting to these transactions of former times, it is n0 part of wi #8 very 
to revive unpleasant recollections, or to throw discredit on the history © the life of 
respectable States above named; but without the recital of these facts 
Whitney could not have been written. 
