Let us inquire how this immense foreign commerce is sustained; how these $317,873,000 of foreign imports are paid for by the American people; and how far the Northern and Southern States respectively have contributed to its payment. More than one-half the amount, or $161,434,923, was paid in raw cotton, and more than one-third of the remainder, or $57,502,305, in the precious metals; leaving less than $100,000,000 to be paid in the other productions of the country. More than one-third of this remainder was paid in cotton fabrics, tobacco, and rice; while the products of the forest, of the sea, and of various minor manufactures, swelled up our credits, so that the exports of breadstuffs and provisions, needed to liquidate the debt, only amounted to a little over $38,000,000.[98] Of this amount the exports, from the Northern States, of wheat and wheat flour, made up only $15,262,769, and the corn and corn meal but $2,206,396. "King Hay," so much lauded for his magnitude and money value, never once ventured on board a merchant vessel, to seek a foreign land, so as to aid in paying for the commodities which we imported.[99] In a word, the products of the forest and of agriculture, exported by the free States, amounted in value to about $45,300,000; while the same classes of products, supplied for export by the Slave States, amounted to more than $193,400,000.[100] The economical relations of the North and the South can now be understood more clearly than they could be from the statistics referred to in the body of this work. The facts, in relation to the commerce of the United States, for 1859, were not accessible until after the stereotyping had been completed; and they are only crowded in here by omitting two or three pages of remarks of another kind, but of less importance, which closed the volume. By consulting Table XII, and two or three of the others, which contain similar facts, covering the commercial operations of the country since the year 1821, the whole question of the relations of the North and the South can be fully comprehended. It will be seen that the exports of tobacco, which are mainly from the South, have equaled in value considerably more than one-third the amount of that of breadstuffs and provisions; and that, in the same period, the exports of cotton have exceeded in value those of breadstuffs and provisions to the amount of $1,421,482,261.[101] Here, now, a just conception can be formed of the importance of cotton to the commerce of the country, as compared with our other productions. The amount exported, of that article, in the last thirty-nine years, has exceeded in value the exports of breadstuffs and provisions to the extent of _fourteen hundred and twenty-one millions of dollars_! Verily, Cotton is King!