SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 271 



increased, and yet the boundaries of the cotton belt have been 

 pushed comparatively little beyond what they were in 1850. In 

 the new states west of the Mississippi the cotton region lay 

 entirely to the south of the isothermal line for mean summer 

 temperature. East of the river it extended north of this line, 

 which passed through northern Alabama and Georgia and mid- 

 dle South Carolina. The area of chief production began in 

 southeastern Virginia, and, usually avoiding the coast, passed 

 through the central portions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama 

 and Mississippi, then widened to the northward and embraced 

 northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas, and ended in the 

 central portion of the great state of Texas. 



It will doubtless surprise many readers to learn that notwith- 

 standing this vast area within which cotton was the leading staple 

 cultivated, the actual acreage devoted to this crop at any time 

 previous to the Civil War was very small. The crop of 1859- 

 1860, which was by far the largest that had ever been pro- 

 duced, being in excess of 2,000,000,000 pounds, was raised on 

 an acreage less than that included within the boundaries of South 

 Carolina, even when the most liberal estimate of the cotton acreage 

 is accepted. 



In 1836, when cotton cultivation had begun to extend beyond 

 the Mississippi, Woodbury's report, estimating the production 

 per acre at a little less than 250 pounds, considered the whole 

 amount of land then devoted to cotton raising to be not far 

 from 2,000,000 acres. From calculations made on the basis 

 of the census of 1840, De Bow estimated the number of acres 

 devoted to the cultivation of cotton at 4,500,000, and in 1850, 

 as superintendent of the Seventh Census, he estimated the 

 cotton area at 5,000,000 acres. The census of i860 estimated 

 the large crop of cotton grown that year to be the product 

 of 6,968,498 acres, but as already mentioned, later and more 

 careful estimates nearly double the acreage. It is quite prob- 

 able that the estimates of early years were also too conserv- 

 ative, and that the entire acreage was larger than it was . then 

 supposed to be. But even if the later estimate of 13,000,000 

 acres for i860 be allowed, we still find the total acreage to have 



