| THE "STAR SPANGLED BANNER."[6] |
Later, Mr. Whitney built a gun-factory near New Haven, Connecticut, at a place now called Whitneyville; at that factory he made thousands of the muskets which we used in our second war with England in 1812.
6 In the war of 1812 the British war-ships attacked Fort McHenry, one of the defences of Baltimore. Francis Scott Key, a native of Maryland, who was then detained on board a British man-of-war, anxiously watched the battle during the night; before dawn the firing ceased. Key had no means of telling whether the British had taken the fort until the sun rose; then, to his joy, he saw the American flag still floating triumphantly above the fort—that meant that the British had failed in their attack, and Key, in his delight, hastily wrote the song of the Star Spangled Banner on the back of a letter which he had in his pocket. The song was at once printed, and in a few weeks it was known and sung from one end of the United States to the other.
[182. Summary.]—About a hundred years ago (1793), Eli Whitney of Westboro', Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin, a machine for pulling off the green seeds from cotton wool, so that it may be easily woven into cloth. That machine made thousands of cotton-planters and cotton manufacturers rich, and by it cotton cloth became so cheap that everybody could afford to use it.
What name did a boy cut on a door? What did Eli make in that workshop? What did he make while his father was away? What did his father say? What did Eli's fiddle seem to say? What did Eli make next? How did he make his nails? Where did he go after he gave up making nails? When he left college where did he go? What lady did he become acquainted with? What did he make for her? What did the cotton-planters say? What must be done to raw cotton before it can be made into cloth? Who did this work? What did Mrs. Greene say to the planters? What did Mr. Whitney say? What did he do? Tell how he made his machine. What did he call it? How many pounds of cotton would his cotton-gin clean in a day? How much could one negro clean? What is said about the price of cotton cloth? What did the planters say about cotton? Who built the throne for King Cotton? What did Mr. Whitney build at Whitneyville? What did he make there?
[THOMAS JEFFERSON]
(1743-1826)
[183. How much cotton New Orleans sends to Europe; Eli Whitney's work; who it was that bought New Orleans and Louisiana for us.]—To-day the city of New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, sends more cotton to England and Europe than any other city in America.
| LOADING COTTON AT NEW ORLEANS. |
If you should visit that city and go down to the riverside, you would see thousands of cotton bales[1] piled up, and hundreds of negroes loading them on ocean steamers. It would be a sight you would never forget.