After the Revolutionary War, Americans quickly began to establish their own industries, eager to move on from the embargos placed on them during British rule. One agricultural industry that flourished was the growing and ginning of cotton, its success largely coming from the invention of the cotton gin. Most Americans believe that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Southern folklore tells a different story-that a young blacksmith from South Carolina, Henry Ogden Holmes, patented the first practical cotton gin. It was a continuous-flow rip-saw-toothed gin, much more efficient than Whitney's...