in the 70 '90s, a connecticut inventor eli whitney working on the plantation of katherine corinne outside of savannah and came up with a mechanical invention called the cotton gin that makes cotton for the first time now you could get the seeds out from the fiber. said people switch from tobacco to cotton. from the early 1800's on, the cotton was king in this area as one of the preachers have said. for ruth the entire antebellum period before the of for the countryside produce cotton cotton farmers brought here to market and while here they brought the goods and luxury items from the merchants of agusta. they were a part of the confederacy because during the civil war agusta was chosen as the site of the powder works and the agusta arsenal was a rented to the confederates january 1861 to produce munitions throughout the war. so agusta was very much a part of the war but there was no actual fighting that makes the recovery faster and easier. is in the reconstruction period they began to talk of the new south philosophy to build the textile mills and cotton to the north and the money that w