The cotton gin, patented by Eli Whitney of Massachusetts in 1793, removed cotton seeds from cotton fibers. Earlier simple ginning machines could clean the long-fiber Sea Island cotton grown on the Georgia coast, but they could not remove seeds from the short-fiber cotton grown across the rest of Georgia. Whitney’s gin could clean this short-staple upland cotton, helping “King Cotton” become a major cash crop in the South. Cotton planting and harvesting with slave labor became extremely profitable for plantation owners, and the abundant supply of southern cotton made northern factory owners and merchants wealthy. Ironically, the North’s massive industrial capital, generated by the South’s agricultural, slave-based cotton economy, helped the Union defeat the Confederacy and abolish slavery. The original Prater’s gin stood just north of the mill, and this gin was moved from the Earl Shugart farm in Cohutta in the 1980s.