The language of the learned judge was high-flown; but he was a just judge, and he had a faint and glimmering idea of the real importance of this remarkable invention. It was a very simple affair. The principle came to Whitney in a flash, and he had a model constructed within ten days after the despairing planters had gone to him with their problem. But it may be doubted whether any other individual, by one simple invention, ever did so much for the progress and enrichment of human interests, and for the welfare and the comfort of the human race. This little machine made the agriculture of the South the strongest and the richest in the world, and gave to this section a political power that was for years supreme in the nation, and was only surrendered as the result of a long and exhausting war. By means of the cotton gin, towns and cities have sprung up, and a vast network of railways has been built; and yet the most that Whitney received was a royalty on his gin in North Carolina, and a donation of fifty thousand dollars from the State of South Carolina. In Georgia his right to his invention was stolen, and all that he got out of it was a number of costly lawsuits. After struggling for five years against the overwhelming odds that avarice and greed had mustered to aid them, Whitney turned his attention in another direction, and made a still more remarkable display of his genius. This part of his career does not belong directly to the history of Georgia, but it is interesting enough to be briefly recorded here. The United States Government was in want of arms, and this want various contractors had failed to meet. Through the influence of the secretary of the treasury, Whitney was given a contract to make ten thousand muskets at $13.40 apiece. He had no capital, no works, no machinery, no tools, no skilled workmen, no raw material. In creating a part of these and commanding the rest, he called into play an inventive genius, the extent of which must always excite wonder and admiration.