knots, and this was sufficient to start the rumor throughout the
South that Whitney's gin injured the cotton fiber and that cotton
cleaned by them was worthless. It was two years before this ghost
was laid. Meanwhile Whitney's patent was being infringed on every
hand. "They continue to clean great quantities of cotton with
Lyon's Gin and sell it advantageously while the Patent ginned
cotton is run down as good for nothing," writes Miller to Whitney
in September, 1797. Miller and Whitney brought suits against the
infringers but they could obtain no redress in the courts.

Whitney's attitude of mind during these troubles is shown in his
letters. He says the statement that his machines injure the
cotton is false, that the source of the trouble is bad cotton,
which he ventures to think is improved fifty per cent by the use
of his gin, and that it is absurd to say that the cotton could be
injured in any way in the process of cleaning. "I think," he
says, writing to Miller, "you will be able to convince the CANDID
that this is quite a mistaken notion and them that WILL NOT
BELIEVE may be damn'd." Again, writing later to his friend Josiah
Stebbins in New England: "I have a set of the most Depraved
villains to combat and I might almost as well go to HELL in
search of HAPPINESS as apply to a Georgia Court for Justice." And
again: "You know I always believed in the 'DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN
NATURE.' I thought I was long ago sufficiently 'grounded and
stablished' in this Doctrine. But God Almighty is continually
pouring down cataracts of testimony upon me to convince me of
this fact. 'Lord I believe, help thou,' not 'mine unbelief,' but
me to overcome the rascality of mankind." His partner Miller, on
the other hand, is inclined to be more philosophical and suggests
to Whitney that "we take the affairs of this world patiently and