But the vast cotton region, embracing the better part of middle and eastern North Carolina and the accessible lands of the lower South to Eastern Texas, and extending over most of the Mississippi Valley to St. Louis, was the heart of the South, which supported the Polk Administration and waged the war upon Mexico soon to begin. In this fine country, men of ability made fortunes in a few years and learned to imitate the life of the old southern manor houses. Forests were cleared away in winter by the sturdy hands of slaves, and new fields were opened to cotton culture each spring to supply the places of those that had been rapidly worn down by unscientific methods of agriculture. The cabins which made the homes of well-to-do men in the Jeffersonian epoch gave way to substantial frame houses with massive columns and wide verandas, with great hallways and broad banquet-rooms, which so much delighted the heart of the planter of Calhoun's day. In a warm climate like that of the cotton region the object of the builder was always to attain cool recesses and retired gardens, where the social life of the time displayed itself. The houses were built on hilltops covered with primeval oaks, which cast a dense shade over all. Sometimes stone or brick walls protected the premises against the outer world, and wide entrances, guarded on either side by sculptured lions or tigers, gave a dignity and a splendor which reminded one of the estates of English noblemen. In the rear of these pretentious and sometimes beautiful houses were the rows of negro cabins, with their little gardens for the raising of vegetables and the ranges for chickens, as dear to the palates of negro slaves as to those of visiting clergymen. The barns and carriage houses completed the outfit. Where hundreds of bales of cotton and thousands of barrels of corn were grown annually, there would be driving or saddle horses for the master's family and many Kentucky mules for the work of the fields; and a plantation took on the appearance of a busy colony in a new country. Sixty to a hundred negroes were regarded as the best labor unit for profitable agriculture. Of these there would be a few house servants trained in all the intricacies of patriarchal hospitality and courtesy. The carriage driver and keeper of the stables, sometimes clad in the extra dignity of a special livery and a tall silk hat, a tyrant to all the little negroes, but an obsequious flatterer to those who were welcome at the master's house, was perhaps the most envied man of the estate. To see this matchless son of Africa mounted on the high seat of an old-fashioned English carriage, as he drove his prancing horses to the front door of the "great house" and asked if all were ready for church, was to get a glimpse of the old South itself. The boasted freedom of "poor white trash" or of "impudent free issue negroes" had no attractions to him who enjoyed these high prerogatives.