In 1794 Eli Whitney patented the Cotton Gin, and marketed it as a cheap and easy way to make a profit growing cotton in the American south.
The Cotton Gin created an economic boom in the U.S. and helped grow the nation. However, the invention also encouraged slavery, which contributed the American Civil War. While the gin provided a quick and easy way to separate useless seeds from valuable cotton fiber, harvesting the cotton from southern plantations remained both time consuming and labor intensive. In their search for a cheap solution to the problem, plantation owners turned to slavery to provide the work force needed to harvest cotton.

Eli Whitney …show more content…
But instead accepted a job helping Catherine Green, the widow of a revolutionary war general, with her plantation in Georgia. Catherine explained to him the problems with growing short staple cotton in the south. Telling him how after the cotton was harvested, there were still seeds mixed in with the cotton fiber. Removing the seeds by hand was a long and arduous process requiring hours of work to make enough for just one garment.
Whitney realized that if he could invent a machine that could separate out the seeds, he could sell it to plantation owners and pay off his debts.
He immediately started to design the machine and in 1794 he applied for a patent for his cotton gin. The gin was an immediate success. Every plantation in the south wanted one of Whitney’s machines.

Whiteny charged high prices for his gins, and many opted to create their own version of the gin, some of which were superior to the original invention. Whitney sued the creators of these machines; but never won because of a loophole in U.S. patent law at the time. Because of this, Whitney never made much money on the Cotton Gin, even when the law was changed in