the population engaged in specialized agriculture was also a factor of prime importance. In both these respects the area first mentioned, the Chesapeake lowlands, was of least importance. The decline of the plantation system was already evident in Virginia and Maryland in 1775. "The tobacco staple was a resource of decreasing value, and many people were finding it necessary to resort instead to the production of food-stuffs for market."

A more general agriculture with considerable areas devoted to wheat and other grains, and in the back-country to cattle raising, was taking the place of the former specialization.2 The planters in the tide-water region in 1810 were raising beef and pork, poultry and mutton, apples and other fruits in sufficient quantities for their own consumption, and wheat and corn for export. The exceptional plantations which must depend on outside food supplies were very easily supplied from the back-country region where a general system of agriculture had always prevailed, for in Virginia and Maryland this region was in close contact with that of the plantations. Consequently we are not surprised to find that the New England farmers had no market in this region.*

'Philips, Ulrich B., Plantation and Frontier. In Documentary History of American Industrial Society. (John R. Commons, ed.) 10 vols. Vol. I., p. 83. 2 Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia. (1787) Boston. 1832. p. 174, had noted this tendency. In his estimate of the exports are found: Wheat, 800,000 bu.; and corn, 600,000 bu., with smaller amounts of peas, beef, and pork. See also Morse, Gazetteer, 1810, art. Virginia.

As early as 1767, John Mitchell had written of this region: "The tobacco colonies enjoy a better soil and climate, [than "the more Northern colonies"] and have by that means hitherto had a good staple commodity,.

so long as their lands are fresh and fertile; but most of them are worn out with that exhausting weed, and will no longer bear it; they are turned into Corn and Pasture grounds, which produce nothing but Corn, Cattle and Wool, as in the Northern colonies; And of Virginia in particular he says: "the soil is in general very light, and so shallow, that it is soon worn out by culture, especially with such exhausting crops as Indian Corn and Tobacco. It is for this reason that they are now obliged to sow Wheat, and exported fifty or sixty shiploads the last year.”" The Present State of Great Britain and North America. London. 1767. pp. 175– 176, 177.

See the description of Prince George County, Virginia, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., I. 3: 89.

⚫ A discussion of the commerce of Maryland is to be found in Carey, Matthew. American Pocket Atlas. 3 ed. Phila. 1805. p. 85; in Winterbotham, W. Historical, Geographical, Commercial, View of the United States of America. 4 vols. New York. 1796. Vol. III., p. 43; and in Morse, Gazetteer, Art. Maryland.

.

(2) The Coastal Plains of South Carolina and Georgia.

On the coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia a much different state of affairs was to be found. Here on an extremely fertile strip of lowlands, lying parallel with the coast and stretching about fifty miles into the interior, were rice swamps and cotton plantations employing large numbers of negro slaves. Through the invention of Whitney's gin in 1793, the cost of producing upland cotton had been greatly cheapened. With the increase in the demand which ensued, the production of this staple had been extended from the seacoast toward the upland region. The exports of cotton from the port of Charleston increased from 1,000,000 lbs., in 1795, to 8,300,000 in 1801. It was then of greater value than the combined exports of rice and indigo, the other two staples of this region.1 The extension of cultivation was accompanied by an increasing specialization on the plantations. There was a tendency for the planters to neglect the production of food-stuffs and to turn their whole attention to the staple crops. This tendency is clearly observable in the descriptions of South Carolina in the period 1800 to 1810. La Rochefoucauld, writing just before the beginning of the nineteenth century, describes several plantations, of whose area a considerable proportion was then devoted to the cultivation of Indian corn, barley and potatoes. In one passage he says: "All the planters keep great numbers of oxen, cows, and pigs, which procure their food easily, and without the least expense, in the large forests which belong to the plantations." The following quotation from a description of 1802, however, shows that the commercial interest had then come into the foreground. "In the husbandry of Carolina, two objects are particularly kept in view by the planters and farmers. The first is to raise something for sale; and the second is to secure provisions for family concerns. To the first the principal attention is directed; as being the source from whence all pecuniary advancements are made: while the other is only attended to, as opportunities permit. In the lower country cotton and rice are cultivated largely for sale; while Indian corn, cow pease and long potatoes, are only planted sufficient for the yearly consumption of the settlement: and on many of the tide swamp rice plantations, no provisions, but potatoes, are planted; their produce being only equal to the support of the plantation for a few months. The rest is supplied by the purchase of Indian corn,

1 Drayton, John. A View of South Carolina. Charleston. 1802. p. 118 and

note.

2 Travels, I. 598. See also pp. 586, 597.

brought down the rivers from the middle parts of the state; and also imported from some of these United States. "1

Lambert, writing a few years later, said in describing plantation life in this state: "Everything is made subservient to the cultivation of cotton and rice. With hundreds of slaves about them, and cattle of various kinds, they are often without butter, cheese and even milk, for many weeks." In 1809 Ramsay, the historian, in speaking of the increase in the cultivation of cotton and rice since 1795, said: "These two staples have so monopolized the agricultural force of the state that for several years past other articles of export and even provisions have been greatly neglected. In their great eagerness to get money the planters have brought themselves into a state of dependence on their neighbors for many of the necessaries of life, formerly raised at home."

The plantation system, however, had not been extended over a very large part of the lowland region in 1810. There were still many small planters and farmers who, while devoting most of their attention to the staple products, raised sufficient grain and meat for their own consumption and that of the few negroes whom they employed. It becomes important, therefore, to delimit as closely as possible the area of large scale, specialized agriculture; for only in this way can the extent of the market for food-stuffs be determined. This may be best accomplished by an examination of the relative numbers of blacks and whites in the seacoast counties of South Carolina and Georgia. The plantation system in its full development meant the presence of large numbers of slaves with relatively few white masters and overseers. Such a system, therefore, could hardly be the rule in districts where the whites were equal or numerically superior to the blacks. Yet such was the case in all but four districts in South Carolina, and in all but five in Georgia. These nine districts formed

1 Drayton, View, p. 113.

2 Lambert, Travels, II. 148. Lambert's travels were made in 1806-1808.

3 Ramsay, David. History of South Carolina. 3 vols. Charleston. 1809. II.

214.

a continuous belt along the coast of the two states for some 250 miles. They contained in 1810 a total population of about 150,000, of whom over 110,000 were slaves. This, then, was the extent of the market for food supplies in that general region known as the Southern states.

The back-country region of these two states could have very easily supplied this market, except for the presence of a strip of pine barrens intervening between the upper country, where general agriculture was carried on, and the plantation district. This middle country, a sterile area varying from fifty to seventy miles in width, producing little in the way of food-stuffs except in the river valleys, formed a barrier to trade between the regions on either side. It was the presence of the barrier region that forced the planters of the lowlands to buy a part at least of their grain, vegetables, dairy products and saltmeat from the Middle and New England states. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the back-country furnished no supplies at all to the planters. The intervening region was crossed in at least three places by rivers navigable to the edge of the upper country, by vessels of 70 tons burden.1 There was, besides, some carriage of country produce by wagons from the upper country to the coast.2

The products of the Middle and Northern states were carried hither in the small coasting vessels which, as we have seen, were owned in so many New England ports. They brought grain from New York and Pennsylvania; and from New England, cheese and butter, dried fish, salted beef, apples, potatoes, hay and cider. Some of the cargoes contained various products of household industry such as the coarse linen tow-cloth used for garments for the slaves,

These figures are taken from the second U. S. Census (1800).

1 See Drayton, View, pp. 30-31.

2 Ibid. p. 141, and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels, I. 630.

straw hats, woodenware and, finally shoes which, as we have found, had risen to the dignity of a manufacture.1

In this analysis we have seen the market included under that vague term "the Southern states," shrinking in reality to the population of a modern city of fair size, but spread over 250 miles of seacoast, and distant over 800 miles from the ports of New England. And besides, New England shared the privilege of feeding these 40,000 planters and their 110,000 slaves with the back-country and the Middle states. Only a few New England farmers, those in the seacoast towns and in the towns behind such ports as New Haven and New London, in Connecticut, could have had any access to this market. The mere fact that some products were shipped from such towns to a market so small and at such a distance is the best sort of evidence of the lack of any market at all at home. It shows how strenuously the farmers were trying to supply this lack and to break through the bounds of their self-sufficient economy.

(3) The West Indies.

The third region outside of New England, in which its farmers found a market for agricultural products, was the sugar-producing islands of the West Indies. There were several circumstances which made the demand for outside food supplies greater in these islands than in the cotton plantations of South Carolina and Georgia. In the first place, the raising of sugar on large plantations with slave labor had long been established and had made great progress through the eighteenth century.2 Large importations of negroes from Africa followed, and a considerable increase in the white population. In 1810 there were probably about 2,000,000 persons in all the islands of the archipelago, of whom only a few hundred thousand were whites.3 The principal sugar producing islands were owned by England and

1 See Belknap, History of New Hampshire, III. 218; Gallatin, Report on Manufactures, p. 439; Bond, Phineas. Letters (1787-1794). In Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1896-1897. P. 651.

2 The value of the exports of the English islands to the home country had increased from £629,533 in 1699 to £6,390,658 in 1798. Between the years 1699 and 1775 the amount of sugar exported to England from these islands increased from 427,573 cwt. to 2,002,224 cwt. See Edwards, Bryan. History of the British Colonies in the West Indies. 3 ed. London. 1801. II. 595-598. The figures, based largely on estimates, in Morse's Gazetteer for 1817, Vol. II., app., are 2,430,000. In Worcester, J. E. Universal Gazetteer, 2 ed. Boston. 1823. Vol. II., p. 944, the sum of the population of the islands owned by various nations is put at 1,700,000.