This image shows two black men operating the gin, while women carried bales with children helping. White men oversee this operation. The illustration accompanies an article describing the construction of this gin, a model that preceded the one invented by Eli Whitney (p. 814) . A version of this image was later published in Charles C. Coffin, Building the Nation (New York, 1883), p. 76. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization was an American political magazine based in New York City and published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects and humor, alongside illustrations. It covered the American Civil War extensively, including many illustrations of events from the war.

Harper's Weekly (Dec. 18, 1869), p. 813.

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

HW0050

North America

"The First Cotton-Gin", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed January 23, 2021, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1119