18 G. S. CALLENDER 



of labor, and says it "is occasioned by the inhabitants giving 

 the preference to agriculture, there being but few who put 

 their children to trade, because they require their assistance 

 in their own employment." 



Such was the condition of the west before the war of 1812, 

 and its economic relation to the rest of the country. Turn 

 now to the changes which followed the war and their effect 

 upon the west, and through it upon the country at large. As 

 we have seen, the chief obstacle to the prosperity of this 

 section was the lack of a market. Two events soon removed 

 this obstacle, and started the whole country forward on its re- 

 markable career of development. The first was the introduc- 

 tion of the steamboat ; the second was the extension of cotton 

 culture into the southwest. The steamboat was introduced 

 on the Ohio at Pittsburg as early as 1811; but it was six 

 years later before it had demonstrated its ability to stem the 

 rapid current of western rivers. With that event the western 

 country was suddenly supplied with a system of transporta- 

 tion which reached wide stretches of country, and brought 

 them into easy communication with the seaboard. With the 

 rise of the cotton industry in England and Whitney's famous 

 invention in this country, cotton culture began its amazing 

 growth. 



For more than twenty years it was confined almost entirely 

 to the eastern seaboard. A small amount was raised about 

 New Orleans in Louisiana, near Natchez in Mississippi, and 

 near Nashville in Tennessee; but in 1802 only 29,000 bales were 

 exported from New Orleans, and this had increased to only 

 37,000 in 1816. About the latter date cotton planters began 

 to turn their attention for the first time in considerable num- 

 bers to the southwest. The great body of fertile soil in this 

 region suited to the cultivation of this staple, the numerous 

 navigable rivers, coupled with the fact that cotton, having 

 large value in small weight, could bear the expense of land 

 transportation to the rivers from a long distance over poor 

 roads, combined to make this extension of cotton culture into 

 the southwest the source of the greatest profits in agriculture 

 which the American people had ever enjoyed. A flood of 

 emigrants from the older slave states now poured into this 



