Creative Books

[Footnote: Blane, Excursion through
U.S., 226; Hodgson, Letters from North Am., I., 194.] At the same
time, illicit importation of slaves through New Orleans reached an
amount estimated at from ten to fifteen thousand a year. [Footnote:
Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 44.] It was not until the next decade
that this incoming tide of slaves reached its height, but by 1830 it
was clearly marked and was already transforming the southwest.
Mississippi doubled the number of her slaves in the decade, and
Alabama nearly trebled hers. In the same period the number of slaves
of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina increased but slightly.
As the discussion of the south has already made clear, the
explanation of this transformation of the southwest into a region of
slave-holding planters lies in the spread of cotton into the Gulf
plains. In 1811 this region raised but five million pounds of
cotton; ten years later its product was sixty million pounds; and in
1826 its fields were white with a crop of over one hundred and fifty
million pounds.


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