51�Թ�

In addition to farming 3,100 acres, the family soon operated a seed and fertilizer business, warehouses, a peanut-shelling plant and a cotton gin.

Keeping up with the pace of technology has challenged Congress since the steam engine and the cotton gin transformed the nation’s industrial and agricultural sectors.

A foreman, he ran the Hermitage cotton gin—an important position on the farm, where cotton was a cash crop.

Mechanical cotton gins facilitated the 19th century expansion of slavery in the American South.

After torturing him, they shot him in the head and tied a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River.