TLF ID M008731
This is a black-and-white illustration captioned 'The first cotton gin'. It shows how the US artist William L Sheppard imagined the scene of the first gin in operation, some 80 years after the actual event. Sheppard depicts two male slaves operating the machine with two white men examining the ginned cotton while female slaves haul bales of cotton from the fields. The illustration was published in the 18 December 1869 issue of Harper's Weekly Magazine.