Two Economic Systems Develop
Northeasterners, prompted by changing economic condi-
tions, invested their capital in factories and manufacturing
operations. Cash crops did not grow well in the Northern
soil and climate. Southerners, on the other hand, had
begun to reap huge profits from cotton by the mid-1790s.
The South had little incentive to industrialize. As a result,
the North and the South continued to develop two distinct
economies, including very different agricultural systems.
AGRICULTURE IN THE NORTH
The North had not elim-
inated agriculture. However, the type of land and the
growth of cities in the North encouraged farmers to culti-
vate smaller farms than Southerners did, and to grow crops
that did not require much labor to flourish.
Farmers in the North usually started out growing only
what their families needed. Then farming practices in the
Old Northwest—the area north of the Ohio River, encom-
passing what is now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin, and Michigan—diverged from farming practices
in the Northeast. As cities grew, farmers in the Old
Northwest discovered that they could raise one or two types
of crops or livestock (corn and cattle, for example), and sell
what they produced at city markets. They could then pur-
chase from stores whatever else they needed. Such grain
crops as corn did not require much labor to grow, nor were
they hugely profitable, so there was little demand for slaves.
In the Northeast, farms were even smaller than those in the
Northwest, so here too there was little demand for slavery.
By the late 1700s, slavery in the North was dying out.
Farmers had little economic motivation to use slaves, and
an increasing number of Northerners began to voice their
religious and political opposition to slavery. Consequently,
by 1804 almost all of the Northern states had voluntarily
abolished slavery.
COTTON IS KING IN THE SOUTH
Eli Whitney’s invention
of a cotton gin (short for “cotton engine”) in 1793 had
helped to set the South on a different course of development
from the North. Short-staple (or short-fiber) cotton was easier
to grow but harder to clean than long-staple cotton.
Whitney’s gin made it possible for Southern farmers to grow
short-staple cotton for a profit. Since cotton was in great
demand in Britain and, increasingly, in the North, an efficient
machine for cleaning the seeds from short-staple cotton proved a major break-
through. Armed with the cotton gin, poor, nonslaveholding farmers quickly
claimed land in the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi south of the
Ohio to begin cultivating this cash-producing crop. Wealthier planters followed,
bought up huge areas of land, and then put an enormous slave labor force to work
cultivating it. By 1820, this plantation system of farming had transformed Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama into a booming Cotton Kingdom. In this way, the cotton
gin accelerated the expansion of slavery.
SLAVERY BECOMES ENTRENCHED
Although slave importation had declined
during the American Revolution, by the 1820s the demand for slaves had begun
Balancing Nationalism and Sectionalism 215
AGRICULTURE AND
MIGRATION
Changes in agricultural technolo-
gy often cause large population
movements. Today’s agricultural
technology enables farmers to
plant and grow crops with fewer
workers than in the past, but
many hands are still needed at
harvest time. The United States
has about half a million migrant
agricultural workers. Whole fami-
lies may move seasonally follow-
ing the harvest. Children of
migrant workers, like this 11-year
old boy in Plainview, Texas, often
help in the fields at peak harvest
times.
In the early 1800s, the cotton
gin led to a mass movement of
planters and slaves into
Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. Mechanical cotton
pickers replaced huge communi-
ties of field hands in the 1930s.
Many laborers were African
Americans, who then migrated
from rural to urban areas in
search of work.
