, 794.]
The time had now come when this section was to make itself felt as a
dominant force in American life. Already it had shown its influence
upon the older sections. By its competition, by its attractions for
settlers, it reacted on the east and gave added impulse to the
democratic movement in New England and New York. The struggle of
Baltimore, New York City, and Philadelphia for the rising commerce
of the interior was a potent factor in the development of the middle
region. In the south the spread of the cotton-plant and the new form
which slavery took were phases of the westward movement of the
plantation. The discontent of the old south is partly explained by
the migration of her citizens to the west and by the competition of
her colonists in the lands beyond the Alleghenies. The future of the
south lay in its affiliation to the Cotton Kingdom of the lower
states which were rising on the plains of the Gulf of Mexico.
Rightly to understand the power which the new west was to exert upon
the economic and political life of the nation in the years between
1820 and 1830, it is necessary to consider somewhat fully the
statistics of growth in western population and industry.
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