While the west was thus learning the advantages of a home market,
the extension of cotton and sugar cultivation in the south and
southwest gave it a new and valuable market. More and more, the
planters came to rely upon the northwest for their food supplies and
for the mules and horses for their fields. Cotton became the
engrossing interest of the plantation belt, and, while the full
effects of this differentiation of industry did not appear in the
decade of this volume, the beginnings were already visible.
[Footnote: Callender, "Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises
of the States," in Quarterly Journal of Econ., XVII., 3-54.] In
1835, Pitkin [Footnote: Pitkin, Statistical View (1835), 534.]
reckoned the value of the domestic and foreign exports of the
interior as far in excess of the whole exports of the United States
in 1790. Within forty years the development of the interior had
brought about the economic independence of the United States.
During most of the decade the merchandise to supply the interior was
brought laboriously across the mountains by the Pennsylvania
turnpikes and the old National Road; or, in the case of especially
heavy freight, was carried along the Atlantic coast into the gulf
and up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboats.
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