It was by the very processes of western growth that the seaboard
south now found itself a minority section and the home of
discontent. As the rich virgin soil of the Gulf plains opened to
cotton culture, the output leaped up by bounds. In 1811 the total
product was eighty million pounds; in 1821 it was one hundred and
seventy-seven millions; in 1826 it was three hundred and thirty
millions. Prices fell as production increased. In 1816 the average
price of middling uplands in New York was nearly thirty cents, and
South Carolina's leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was
seventeen cents, and the south saw in the protective system a
grievance; in 1824 it was fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the
South-Carolinians denounced the tariff as unconstitutional. When the
woolens bill was agitated in 1827, cotton had fallen to but little
more than nine cents, and the radicals of the section threatened
civil war.
Moreover, the price of slaves was increased by the demands of the
new cotton-fields of Alabama, Mississippi, and the rest of the
southwest, so that the Carolina planter had to apply a larger
capital to his operations, while, at the same time, the cheap and
unexhausted soil of these new states tended still further to hamper
the older cotton areas in their competition, and the means of
transportation from the western cotton-fields were better than from
those of South Carolina.
Pages:
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461