217ATLANTIC
OCEANGulf of
MexicoMi
ss
issippiR.SavannahCharlestonNashvilleSalisburyNorfolkBaton RougeNatchezVicksburgNew OrleansMobileJackson MontgomeryTucscaloosa TuskegeePort LavacaGalvestonExtent of cotton growing,
1801 to 1839
Extent of cotton growing,
1840 to 1860
Slave trading routesGEORGIAALABAMA
MISSISSIPPIINDIAN
TERRITORYMISSOURIARKANSASLOUISIANAto HavanaILLINOIS INDIANAFLORIDAOHIOSOUTH
CAROLINANORTH
CAROLINAVIRGINIATEXASKENTUCKYTENNESSEEWestward Spread of Cotton, 1801 to 1860The westward spread of cotton cultivation after 1820 intensified the division between North and South.
joined by representatives from the woolen-producing and mer-
cantile sections of eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the
New York City region. Nearly all other northeastern congress-
men voted for it, as did nearly every congressman in the West.
The vote reflected a profound shift in the nation’s
political geography. Early in the national period, the most
prominent division was often between the more prosper-
ous peoples along the East Coast—tidewater planters and
urban merchants—and the rough frontiersmen in the
western hinterlands. But the vote on the tariff of 1828 was
an early indication of the emerging political geography
reflecting the South’s isolation.
Cotton Belt, 1801–1860
Most of the opposition to the Tariff of Abominations came
from cotton-growing regions—and thus, those dependent on
slavery. Slavery had long existed in North America, but by the
time of the Revolution the growth of the “peculiar institution”
appeared to have been checked. Yet as the eighteenth cen-
tury drew to a close, a boom in cotton cultivation in the
South increased the demand for cheap labor and precipi-
tated slavery’s resurgence. In 1793 only 3,000 bales of cotton
were produced in the United States. In 1800 output reached
100,000 bales, roughly 500 million pounds; then, there were
fewer than a million slaves in the United States, and by
the 1820s annual production was averaging more than
400,000 bales. This was only the beginning. Output exceeded
1 million bales in the mid-1830s and nearly 4 million by 1860.
This growth required a huge expansion of the area where
cotton was grown. First, cotton took over the fertile
Appalachian Piedmont in a band running from southern
Virginia into Georgia. Then it spread westward across central
Alabama and Mississippi and into the rich alluvial soil of the
banks of the Mississippi River, in a broad band from Tennessee
and Arkansas to southern Louisiana. Finally, in the 1840s and
1850s, the crop spread into the eastern sections of Texas.
The westward expansion of cotton cultivation served to
exacerbate an inherently bad institution. Planters in the upper
South increasingly sold their “surplus” slaves to the more fertile
lands in the Mississippi delta, Alabama, and East Texas.Questions for Discussion
■Why did congressmen in New York City and Boston, cities
with plenty of factories, vote with congressmen from
North Carolina and Georgia against the high 1828 tariffs?
■What did the mercantile elites of those cities have in
common with the inland cotton planters of the South?