How The North Won The Civil War

11 Pages 2778 Words

ated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and there, together with a Quaker merchant by the name of Moses Brown, built a spinning jenny from memory (Furnas 303). This meager mill would later become known as the first modern factory in America. It would also become known as the point at which the North began its economic dominance over the South.
Although slow to accept change, The South was not entirely unaffected by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Another inventor by the name of Eli Whitney set out in 1793 to revolutionize the Southern cotton industry. Whitney was working as a tutor for a plantation owner in Georgia (ironically he was born and raised in New England) and therefore knew the problems of harvesting cotton (Brinkley et al. 200). Until then, the arduous task of separating the seeds from the cotton before sale had been done chiefly by slave labor and was, consequently, very inefficient. Whitney developed a machine, which would separate the seed from the cotton swiftly and effectively, cutting the harvesting time by more tha...