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Eli Whitney

Having given slavery a new lease on life, he then made Northern triumph inevitable

How a debt-ridden banana republic became the greatest economic engine the world has ever known

1. 1606: The Virginia Company is formed to seek profit from a new business: American settlement. 2. 1612: John Rolfe plants West Indian tobacco in Virginia, the cash crop that assures the colony’s success.

How the mistress of the plantation became a slave

“WE’RE USED to living around ‘em. You Northerners aren’t. You don’t know anything about ‘em.” This is or was the allpurpose utterance of white Southerners about blacks.

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