means of the spinning-jenny, the power-loom, and
the factory system, furnishing machinery for the
manufacture of cotton beyond the world's supply. ¹

Under the stimulus of this demand for cotton,
year by year the area of slavery extended towards
the west. In the twenties, some of the southern
counties of Virginia were attempting its cultivation; ² interior counties of North Carolina were combining
cotton-raising with their old industries; in South
Carolina the area of cotton and slavery had ex-
tended up the rivers well beyond the middle of the
state; ³ while in Georgia the cotton planters, so long
restrained by the Indian line, broke through the bar-
riers and spread over the newly ceded lands. ⁴ The
accompanying table shows the progress of this crop:
It is evident from the figures that tidewater South
Carolina and Georgia produced practically all of the
cotton crop in 1791, when the total was but two
million pounds. By 1821 the old south produced
one hundred and seventeen million pounds, and,
five years later, one hundred and eighty millions.
But how rapidly in these five years the recently
settled southwest was overtaking the older section

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