The United States, Agriculture and Slavery to 1840

People were migrating across the Appalachian Mountains. Between 1800 and 1820 the combined non-Indian population of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and Alabama is estimated to have increased almost six fold. People in the southern states were putting more of their capital into more land and more slaves and into cotton production rather than into ships for transporting goods or into manufacturing. The bales of cotton produced doubled between 1820 and 1830. The economies of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were becoming tied to the boom in cotton growing in the deeper South. Arkansas Territory was a part of the boom in cotton growing. Arkansas had 1,617 slaves in 1820. It became a state in 1836, and, with an increase in settlement, by 1840, its slave population jumped to 20,000.

Styles were changing. James Madison (president from 1809 to 1817) was the last United States president to wear his hair in a pony tail. His successor, James Monroe (in office until 1825), was the last president to be seen in knee breeches. Population size was also changing. Between 1800 and 1820 the combined populations of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, and Alabama increased almost six times: from around 386,000 to 2,216,000. And the total population for the United States had risen from 5.3 million in 1800 to 9.6 million in 1820, surpassing New Spain -- soon to be Mexico -- which in 1820 had a population of around 6 million. The U.S. was the most populous power on the continent, which had implications for the future.

Both the United States and British North America had their pioneers pushing westward, clearing land and starting farms. And both suffered from economic recession following the Napoleonic Wars -- in part the result of too much optimism and too much unsound money lending.

Before the 1800s, growers in the southern states had tobacco, rice and indigo as major crops. Long-staple cotton was grown along the seacoast, but cotton inland had not been produced for market because removing the sticky seeds from inside each ball of short-staple cotton was too slow to make growing it profitable. The availability of the cotton gin after 1802 changed that, and by 1820 growing cotton had become the South's greatest industry.

The northern and southern states were developing differently. The South was sending its cotton north to factories and for shipment across the Atlantic -- mainly to Britain. And growing more cotton and less food, the South was importing food. Northerners were investing profits from their industry in advances in machinery for all kinds of commercial enterprises, including farmers investing in better tools. Southern plantation owners had less money to invest and were usually in debt to northern bankers. Many who were not plantation owners were interested in buying land and retiring on a small plantation. And everyone was more interested in investing in slaves than they were in labor-saving machinery. Plantation owners found slavery suitable, and in the South were 52 slaves for every 100 whites.[note] Slavery was not suitable for the small family farms or for manufacturing enterprises in the North, and by 1820 half of the northern states had outlawed slavery.

But as yet there were no railroads and, according to Joyce Appleby, before the extensive shipping of goods that railroads made possible "... the internal slave trade represented the most important interstate commerce. (The Relentless Revolution, p.176)

Numbers from http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia.

In the U.S. Congress, southerners battled for what they perceived to be their interests against intrusive legislation created by northerners, especially the most wealthy and most industrialized section of the nation, New England. To maximize their political strength, southern states were counting their slaves for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The population of southern states, black and white, was 4.5 million. That gave the South 80 members in the U.S. House of Representatives. The other states had 105 members in the House of Representatives, and southern politicians worried about being overwhelmed by northern views.

Congress was in the process of making Missouri a state. Southern politicians wanted Missouri to join as a slave state. Northern politicians wanted it to join the Union as a free state. In newspapers, in state legislatures and at mass meetings across the nation much rhetoric was produced. A compromise was reached: Missouri entered the Union in 1821 as a state that allowed slavery and Maine entered as a state that forbade slavery. And a part of the compromise was that within the territory of the Louisiana Purchase no slavery was to be allowed north of 36° 30' north is a circle of latitude that is 36.5 degrees -- the latitude of Missouri's southern border.