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Article: Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Journal of Southern History
- Article date:
- February 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Southern Historical Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. By Angela Lakwete. Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, c. 2003. Pp. xvi, 232. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-7394-0.)
Few objects in American history carry more emotional baggage than the cotton gin. Nineteenth-century historians heralded it as a breakthrough that helped set in motion the expansion of chattel slavery in the South and quickened the industrialization of the North. They focused their gaze on the story of Eli Whitney, the Yale-educated tutor who encountered cotton during his stay at Mulberry Grove plantation outside Savannah, ...