Hither Morgan marched in all haste, crossing the stream on the 2d and 3d
of February, and at once securing all boats. The rains began to fall
again before his men were fairly over, and soon the stream was swelling
with the mountain floods. When Cornwallis reached its banks it was
swollen high and running madly, and it was the 7th of February before he
was able to cross. It seemed, indeed, as if Providence had come to the
aid of the Americans, lowering the rains for them and raising them for
their foes.
Meanwhile, the two divisions of the American army were marching on
converging lines, and on the 9th the forces under Greene and Morgan made
a junction at Guilford Court-House, Cornwallis being then at Salem,
twenty-five miles distant. A battle was fought at this place a month
later, but just then the force under Greene's command was too small to
risk a fight. A defeat at that time might have proved fatal to the cause
of the South. Nothing remained but to continue the retreat across the
State to the border of Virginia, and there put the Dan River between him
and his foe.
To cover the route of his retreat from the enemy, Greene detached
General Williams with the flower of his troops to act as a light corps,
watch and impede Cornwallis and strive to lead him towards Dix's ferry
on the Dan, while the crossing would be made twenty miles lower down.
It was a terrible march which the poor patriots made during the next
four days. Without tents, with thin and ragged clothes, most of them
without shoes, "many hundreds of the soldiers tracking the ground with
their bloody feet," they retreated at the rate of seventeen miles a day
along barely passable roads, the wagon-wheels sinking deep in the mud,
and every creek swollen with the rains. In these four days of anxiety
Greene slept barely four hours, watching every detail with a vigilant
eye, which nothing escaped. On the 14th they reached the ford, hurrying
the wagons across and then the troops, and before nightfall Greene was
able to write that "all his troops were over and the stage was clear."
General Williams had aided him ably in this critical march, keeping just
beyond reach of Cornwallis, and deceiving him for a day or two as to the
intention of the Americans. When the British general discovered how he
had been deceived, he got rid of more of his baggage by the easy method
of fire, and chased Williams across the State at the speed of thirty
miles a day. But the alert Americans marched forty miles a day and
reached the fords of the Dan just as the last of Greene's men had
crossed. That night the rear guard crossed the stream, and when
Cornwallis reached its banks, on the morning of the 15th, to his deep
chagrin he found all the Americans safe on the Virginia side and ready
to contest the crossing if he should seek to continue the pursuit.
That famous march of two hundred miles, from the south side of the
Catawba to the north side of the Dan, in which the whole State of North
Carolina was crossed by the ragged and largely shoeless army, was the
salvation of the Southern States. In Greene's camp there was only joy
and congratulation. Little did the soldiers heed their tattered
garments, their shoeless feet, their lack of blankets and of regular
food, in their pride at having outwitted the British army and fulfilled
their duty to their country. With renewed courage they were ready to
cross the Dan again and attack Cornwallis and his men. Washington wrote
to General Greene, applauding him highly for his skilful feat, and even
a British historian gave him great praise and credit for his skill in
strategy.
Shall we tell in a few words the outcome of this fine feat? Cornwallis
had been drawn so far from his base of supplies, and had burned so much
of his war-material, that he found himself in an ugly quandary. On his
return march Greene became the pursuer, harassing him at every step.
When Guilford Court-House was reached again Greene felt strong enough to
fight, and though Cornwallis held the field at the end of the battle he
was left in such a sorry plight that he was forced to retreat to
Wilmington and leave South Carolina uncovered. Here it did not take
Greene long, with the aid of such valiant partisans as Marion, Sumter,
and Lee, to shut the British up in Charleston and win back the State.
Cornwallis, on the other hand, concluded to try his fortune in
Virginia, where there seemed to be a fine chance for fighting and
conquest. But he was not long there before he found himself shut up in
Yorktown like a rat in a trap, with Washington and his forces in front
and the French fleet in the rear. His surrender, soon after, not only
freed the South from its foes, but cured George III. of any further
desire to put down the rebels in America.
_ELI WHITNEY, THE INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN._
In the harvest season of the cotton States of the South a vast, fleecy
snow-fall seems to have come down in the silence of the night and
covered acres innumerable with its virgin emblem of plenty and
prosperity. It is the regal fibre which is to set millions of looms in
busy whirl and to clothe, when duly spun and woven, half the population
of the earth. That "cotton is king" has long been held as a potent
political axiom in the United States, yet there was a time when cotton
was not king, but was an insignificant member of the agricultural
community. How cotton came to the throne is the subject of our present
sketch.
In those far-off days when King George of England was trying to force
the rebellious Americans to buy and drink his tea and pay for his
stamps, the people of Georgia and South Carolina were first beginning to
try if they could do something in the way of raising cotton. After the
war of independence was over, an American merchant in Liverpool received
from the South a small consignment of eight bags of cotton, holding
about twelve hundred pounds, the feeble pioneer of the great cotton
commerce. When it was landed on the wharves in Liverpool, in 1784, the
custom-house officials of that place looked at it with alarm and
suspicion. What was this white-faced stranger doing here, claiming to
come from a land that had never seen a cotton-plant? It must have come
from somewhere else, and this was only a deep-laid plot to get itself
landed on English soil without paying an entrance fee.
So the stranger was seized and locked up, and Mr. Rathbone, the
merchant, had no easy time in proving to the officials that it was
really a scion of the American soil, and that the ships that brought it
had the right to do so. But after it was released from confinement there
was still a difficulty. Nobody would buy it. The manufacturers were
afraid to handle this new and unknown kind of cotton for fear it would
not pay to work it up, and at last it had to be sold for a song to get a
trial. Such was the state of the American industry at the period when
the great republic was just born. It may be said that the nation and its
greatest product were born together, like twin children.
[Illustration: COTTON-GIN.]
The new industry grew very slowly, and the planters who were trying to
raise cotton in their fields felt much like giving it up as something
that would never pay. In fact, there was a great difficulty in the way
that gave them no end of trouble, and made the cost of cotton so great
that there was very little room for profit. For a time it looked as if
they would have to go back to corn and rice and let cotton go by the
board.
The trouble lay in the fact that in the midst of each little head of
cotton fibres, like a young bird in its nest, lay a number of seeds, to
which the fibres were closely attached. These seeds had to be got out,
and this was very slow work. It had to be done by hand, and in each
plantation store-house a group of old negroes might be seen, diligently
at work in pulling the seeds out from the fibres. Work as hard as they
could it was not easy to clean more than a pound a day, so that by the
time the crop was ready for market it had cost so much that the planter
had to be content with a very small rate of profit. Such was the state
of the cotton industry as late as 1792, when the total product was one
hundred and thirty-eight thousand pounds. In 1795 it had jumped to six
million pounds, and in 1801 to twenty million pounds. This was a
wonderful change, and it may well be asked how it was brought about.
This question brings us to our story, which we have next to tell.
In the year 1792 a bright young Yankee came down to Georgia to begin his
career by teaching in a private family. He was one of the kind who are
born with a great turn for tinkering. When he was a boy he mended the
fiddles of all the people round about, and after that took to making
nails, canes, and hat-pins. He was so handy that the people said there
was nothing Eli Whitney could not do.
But he seems to have become tired of tinkering, for he went to college
after he had grown to manhood, and from college he went to Georgia to
teach. But there he found himself too late, for another teacher had the
place which he expected to get, so there he was, stranded far from home,
with nothing to do and with little money in his purse. By good fortune
he found an excellent friend. Mrs. Greene, the widow of the famous
General Greene of the Revolution, lived near Savannah, and took quite a
fancy to the poor young man. She urged him to stay in Georgia and to
keep up his studies, saying that he could have a home in her house as
long as he pleased.
This example of Southern hospitality was very grateful to the friendless
young man, and he accepted the kindly invitation, trying to pay his way
by teaching Mrs. Greene's children, and at the same time studying law.
But he was born for an inventor, not a lawyer, and could not keep his
fingers off of things. Nothing broke down about Mrs. Greene's house that
he did not soon set working all right again. He fitted up embroidery
frames for her, and made other things, showing himself so very handy
that she fancied he could do anything.
One day Mrs. Greene heard some of the neighboring planters complaining
of the trouble they had in clearing the cotton of its seeds. They could
manage what was called the long-staple cotton by the use of a rough
roller machine brought from England, which crushed the seeds, and then
"bowed" or whipped the dirt out of the lint. But this would not work
with short-staple cotton, the kind usually grown, and there was nothing
to do but to pick the hard seeds out by hand, at the rate of a pound a
day by the fastest workers. The planters said it would be a splendid
thing if they only had a machine that would do this work. Mrs. Greene
told them that this might not be so hard to do. "There is a young man at
my house," she said, "who can make anything;" and to prove it, she
showed them some of the things he had made. Then she introduced them to
Eli Whitney, and they asked him if he thought he could make a machine to
do the work they so badly wanted.
"I don't know about that," he replied. "I know no more about cotton than
a child knows about the moon."
"You can easily learn all there is to know about it," they urged. "We
would be glad to show you our fields and our picker-houses and give you
all the chance you need to study the subject."
Mr. Whitney made other objections. He was interested in his law studies,
and did not wish to break them off. But a chance to work at machinery
was too great an attraction for him to withstand, and at length he
consented to look over the matter and see if he could do anything with
it.
The young inventor lost no time. This was something much more to his
liking than poring over the dry books of the law, and he went to work
with enthusiasm. He went into the fields and studied the growing cotton.
Then he watched the seed-pickers at their work. Taking specimens of the
ripe cotton-boll to his room, he studied the seeds as they lay cradled
in the fibre, and saw how they were fastened to it. To get them out
there must be some way of dragging them apart, pulling the fibres from
the seed and keeping them separate.
The inventor studied and thought and dreamed, and in a very short time
his quick genius saw how the work could be done. And he no sooner saw it
than he set to work to do it. The idea of the cotton-gin was fully
formed in his mind before he had lifted his hand towards making one.
It was not easy, in fact. It is often a long road between an inventor's
first idea and a machine that will do all he wants it to. And he had
nothing to work with, but had to make his own tools and manufacture his
own wire, and work upward from the very bottom of things.
In a few months, however, he had a model ready. Mrs. Greene was so
interested in his work and so proud of his success that she induced him
to show the model and explain its working to some of her planter
friends, especially those who had induced him to engage in the work.
When they saw what he had done, and were convinced of the truth of what
he told them,--that they could clean more cotton in a day by his machine
than in many months by the old hand-picking way,--their excitement was
great, and the report of the wonderful invention spread far and wide.
Shall we say here what this machine was like? The principle was simple
enough, and from that day to this, though the machine has been greatly
improved, Whitney's first idea still holds good. It was a saw-gin then,
and it is a saw-gin still. "Gin," we may say here, is short for
"engine."
This is the plan. There is a grid, or row of wires, set upright and so
close together that the seeds will not go through the openings. Behind
these is a set of circular saws, so placed that their teeth pass through
the openings between the wires. When the machine is set in motion the
cotton is put into a hopper, which feeds it to the grid, and the
revolving saws catch the fibre or lint with their teeth and drag it
through the wires. The seeds are too large to follow, so the cotton is
torn loose from them and they slide down and out of the way. As the
wheel turns round with its teeth full of cotton lint, a revolving brush
sweeps it away so that the teeth are cleaned and ready to take up more
lint. A simple principle, you may say, but it took a good head to think
it out, and to it we owe the famous cotton industry of the South.
But poor Whitney did not get the good from his invention that he
deserved, for a terrible misfortune happened to him. Many people came to
see the invention, but he kept the workshop locked, for he did not want
strangers to see it till he had it finished and his patent granted. The
end was, that one night some thieves broke into the shop and stole the
model, and there were some machines made and in operation before the
poor inventor could make another model and secure his patent.
This is only one of the instances in which an inventor has been robbed
of the work of his brain, and others have grown rich by it, while he
has had trouble to make a living. A Mr. Miller, who afterward married
Mrs. Greene, went into partnership with Whitney, and supplied him with
funds, and he got out a patent in 1794. But the demand for the machines
was so great that he could not begin to supply them, and the pirated
machines, though they were much inferior to his perfected ones, were
eagerly bought. Then his shop burned with all its contents, and that
made him a bankrupt.
For years after that Whitney sought to obtain justice. In some of the
States he was fairly treated and in others he was not, and in 1812
Congress refused to renew the patent, and the field was thrown open for
everybody to make the machines. Nearly all he ever got for his invention
was fifty thousand dollars paid him by the Legislature of South
Carolina.
In later years Whitney began to make fire-arms for the government, and
he was so successful in this that he grew rich, while he greatly
improved the machinery and methods. It was he who first began to make
each part separately, so it would fit in any gun, a system now used in
all branches of manufacture. As for the cotton industry, to which Eli
Whitney gave the first great start, it will suffice to say that its
product has grown from less than one thousand bales, when he began his
work, to over ten million bales a year.
_HOW OLD HICKORY FOUGHT THE CREEKS._
Shall we seek to picture to our readers a scene in the streets of
Nashville, Tennessee, less than a century ago, though it seems to belong
to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most
respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each
other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner
recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward
famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous
in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot in
temper and quick in action, and family feuds led quickly to wounds and
death, as they still do in the mountains of East Tennessee.
Some trifling quarrel, that might perhaps have been settled by five
minutes of common-sense arbitration, led to this fierce fray, in the
midst of which Jesse Benton, brother of the colonel, fired at Jackson
with a huge pistol, loaded to the muzzle with bullets and slugs. It was
like a charge of grape-shot. A slug from it shattered Jackson's left
shoulder, a ball sank to the bone in his left arm, and another ball
splintered a board by his side.
When the fight ended Jackson was found insensible in the entry of a
tavern, with the blood pouring profusely from his wounds. He was carried
in and all the doctors of the town were summoned, but before the
bleeding could be stopped two mattresses were soaked through with blood.
The doctors said the arm was so badly injured that it must be taken off
at once. But when Old Hickory set his lips in his grim way, and said,
"I'll keep my arm," the question was settled; no one dare touch that
arm.
For weeks afterward Jackson lay, a helpless invalid, while his terrible
wounds slowly healed. And while he lay there a dreadful event took place
in the territory to the south, which called for the presence of men like
Old Hickory, sound of limb and in full strength. This was the frightful
Indian massacre at Fort Mimms, one of the worst in all our history.
It was now the autumn of the year 1813, the second year of the war with
England. Tecumseh, the famous Indian warrior and orator, had stirred up
the savages of the South to take the British side in the war, and for
fear of an Indian rising the settlers around Fort Mimms, in southern
Alabama, had crowded into the fort, which was only a rude log stockade.
On the morning of August 30 more than five hundred and fifty souls, one
hundred of them being women and children, were crowded within that
contracted space. On the evening of that day four hundred of them,
including all the women and children, lay bleeding on the ground,
scalped and shockingly mangled. A thousand Creek Indians had broken into
the carelessly guarded fort, and perpetrated one of the most horrid
massacres in the history of Indian wars. Weathersford, the leader of the
Indians, tried to stop the ferocious warriors in their dreadful work,
but they surrounded him and threatened him with their tomahawks while
they glutted to the full their thirst for blood.
Many days passed before the news of this frightful affair in the
southern wilderness reached Nashville. The excitement it created was
intense. The savages were in arms and had tasted blood. The settlements
everywhere were in peril. The country might be ravaged from the Ohio to
the Gulf. It was agreed by all that there was only one thing to do, the
Indians must be put down. But the man best fitted to do it, the man who
was depended upon in every emergency, lay half dead in his room, slowly
recovering from his dreadful wound.
A year before Jackson had led two thousand men to Natchez to defend New
Orleans in case the British should come, and had been made by the
government a major-general of volunteers. He was the man every one
wanted now, but to get him seemed impossible, and the best that could be
done was to get his advice. So a committee was appointed to visit and
confer with the wounded hero.
When the members of the committee called on the war-horse of the West
they found him still within the shadow of death, his wounds sore and
festering, his frame so weak that he could barely raise his head from
the pillow. But when they told him of the massacre and the revengeful
feeling of the people, the news almost lifted him from his bed. It
seemed to send new life coursing through his veins. His voice, weakened
by illness, yet with its old ring of decision, was raised for quick and
stern action against the savage foes who had so long menaced Tennessee.
And if they wanted a leader he was the man.
When the committee reported the next day, they said there was no doubt
that "our brave and patriotic General Jackson" would be ready to lead
the men of war by the time they were ready to march. Where Jackson led
there would be plenty to follow. Four thousand men were called out with
orders to assemble at Fayetteville, eighty miles south of Nashville, on
October 4, just one month from the day when Jackson had received his
wounds. From his bed he took command. By his orders Colonel Coffee rode
to Huntsville, Alabama, with five hundred men. As he advanced volunteers
came riding in armed and equipped, till he was at the head of thirteen
hundred men.
On the 7th of October Jackson himself reached the rendezvous. He was
still a mere wreck, thin as a shadow, tottering with weakness, and
needing to be lifted bodily to his horse. His arm was closely bound and
in a sling. His wounds were so sensitive that the least jar or wrench
gave him agony. His stomach was in such a state that he was in danger
of dying from starvation. Several times during his first two days' ride
he had to be sponged from head to foot with whiskey. Yet his dauntless
spirit kept him up, and he bore the dreadful ride of eighty miles with a
fortitude rarely equalled. So resolute was he that he reached
Fayetteville before half the men had gathered. He was glad there to
receive news that the Creeks were advancing northward towards Tennessee.
"Give them my thanks for saving me the pain of travelling," he said. "I
must not be outdone in politeness, and will try to meet them half-way."
On the 11th a new advance was made to Huntsville, the troops riding six
miles an hour for five hours, a remarkable feat for a man in Jackson's
condition. Many a twinge of bitter pain he had on that march, but his
spirit was past yielding. At this point Colonel Coffee was joined, and
the troops encamped on a bend of the Tennessee River. A false alarm of
the advance of the Indians had caused this hasty march.
Jackson and his men--twenty-five hundred in number with thirteen hundred
horses--now found themselves threatened by a foe more terrible than the
Indians they had come to meet. They were in the heart of the wilderness
of Alabama, far away from any full supply of food. Jackson thus
describes this foe, in a letter written by his secretary:
"There is an enemy whom I dread much more than I do the hostile
Creeks--I mean the meagre monster _Famine_. I shall leave this
encampment in the morning direct for the Ten Islands, and yet I have
not on hand two days' supply of bread-stuffs."
[Illustration: JACKSON'S BIRTHPLACE.]
A thousand barrels of flour and a proportionate supply of meat had been
purchased for him a week before. But the Tennessee River was low, the
flatboats would not float, and the much-needed food lay in the shallows
three hundred miles up-stream. There was nothing to do but to live on
the country, and this Colonel Coffee had swept almost clear of
provisions on his advance movement.
Under such circumstances Jackson ran a great risk in marching farther
into the Indian country. Yet the exigency was one in which boldness
seemed necessary. A reverse movement might have brought the Indians in
force on the settlers of Tennessee, with sanguinary results. Keeping his
foragers busy in search of food, he moved steadily southward till the
Coosa River was reached. Here came the first encounter with the savages.
There was a large body of them at Tallushatches, thirteen miles away. At
daybreak on the morning after the Coosa was reached the Indian camp was
encircled by Colonel Coffee with a thousand men. The savages, taken by
surprise, fought fiercely and desperately, and fell where they stood,
fighting while a warrior remained alive. All the prisoners were women
and children, who were taken to the settlements and kindly treated.
Jackson himself brought up one of the boys in his own family.