After his death, Eli Whitney was described as "one of the most distinguished men who our country as produced." ...

A small plaque now sits in front of a classic white farmhouse in a quiet residential neighborhood on Eli ... gin was officially created, which made harvesting cotton easier and much faster ...

A horse on the bottom level of the ginhouse powered a massive set of hand-carved wooden machinery that operated the Eli Whitney cotton gin above. The gin separated the cotton fibers from the seeds.

Eli Whitney then went and invented inter-changable parts for weapons with assembly lines and allowed the North to quickly arm hundreds of thousands of men with which to crush that would-be empire.

A blacksmith shop/museum still stands today at Grand Detour, Illinois, where he first worked. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 to efficiently extract seeds from cotton, making the crop ...