SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 269 



reached maturity made cotton growing a hazardous undertaking, 

 and when the price sank below ten or twelve cents a pound, the 

 cotton crops of both these states showed an immediate falling off. 

 By i860 the cotton area of Virginia was confined to eight or ten 

 counties lyin^ in the southeastern corner of the state. In North 

 Carolina the principal seat of cotton growing was on the long- 

 leaf-pine lands extending through the middle of the state from 

 north to south. 



Cotton culture seems to have begun in Tennessee almost coin- 

 cident with the admission of that state into the Union, As early 

 as July, 1797, Mr. Miller, of the firm of Miller and Whitney, 

 proposed to his partner that they send an agent to Knoxville, 

 " where we were informed that cotton was valuable," and to Nash- 

 ville and the Cumberland settlements, to gather information con- 

 cerning the culture of cotton in these parts and the mode of 

 cleaning it. On the return of the agent through the " back parts 

 of Virginia," he was to look for an inland market for the con- 

 sumption of cotton cleaned by the saw-gin. By the beginning of 

 the century the culture of cotton in Tennessee had attained such 

 importance that public meetings of the citizens were called at 

 various places to petition the legislature to purchase of Miller and 

 Whitney their patent right to the saw-gin within the limits of 

 Tennessee. At one of these meetings held in Nashville, July 21, 

 1802, General Andrew Jackson presided. In accordance with the 

 desire of the petitioners, the legislature of Tennessee in 1803 

 purchased of Miller and Whitney the right to use the saw-gin 

 within the state limits. Cotton production in this state, with the 

 exception of a few years in the '40's, continued to increase at a 

 uniform rate until the outbreak of the Civil War. 



Although cotton had been cultivated in the great territory of 

 Louisiana even before its purchase by the United States, little 

 attention had been given to the western lands until after 1820. 

 Cotton was still supposed to be the staple of the uplands. But in 

 the decade ending with 1830, the superiority of the prairie lands 

 and river bottoms for cotton growing began to be appreciated, and 

 by 1830 the western country had outstripped the Eastern states in 

 cotton production. It was in the following decade, however, that 



