Slavery was undoubtedly very profitable in Middle and West Tennessee. F. A. Michaux in travelling from Nashville to Knoxville in 1802 says: “Between Nashville and Fort Blount (above Nashville on the Cumberland River about sixty miles) the plantations, although isolated in the woods always, are nevertheless, upon the road, within two or three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log houses; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in abundance.”[32] He says West Tennessee (Cumberland), now Middle Tennessee, produced a very fine grade of cotton and that manufacture was encouraged by the legislature.[33] “Emigrants to Tennessee,” he continues, “by at least the third year have gone over to the cotton crop.” He says that a man and his wife could, aside from raising sufficient Indian corn for sustenance “cultivate four acres (of cotton) with the greatest ease.” This would yield a net produce of two hundred and twelve dollars. “This light sketch,” he says, “demonstrates with what facility a poor family may acquire speedily, in West Tennessee, a certain degree of independence, particularly after having been settled five or six years, as they procure the means of purchasing one or two negroes, and of annually increasing this number.”[34] Lilly Buttrick, travelling in Tennessee from 1812 to 1819, speaks of stopping with an Indian slave owner by the name of Talbot, who lived on the bank of the Tennessee. “This man,” he says, “was said to be very rich, in land, cattle, and negro slaves, and also to have large sums of money in the bank.”[35] The culture of cotton was profitable from the very beginning of the state down to 1860. As early as July, 1797, Mr. Miller of the firm of Miller and Whitney, proposed to his partner that they send an agent to Knoxville, “where we were informed that cotton was valuable,” and to Nashville and the Cumberland settlements to gather information concerning the culture of cotton in those parts and the mode of cleaning it.[36] As soon as the people of these frontier settlements learned that the cotton gin was a success, they held public meetings and petitioned the legislature of Tennessee to buy the patent rights of Miller and Whitney to the saw-gin within the limits of Tennessee. Andrew Jackson presided at some of these meetings.[37] In accordance with the wishes of the people, the legislature purchased the patent rights for the gin within the limits of Tennessee in 1803, and the state began to encourage the growth of cotton. “Cotton production in this state,” says Hammond, “with the exception of a few years in the 40’s, continued to increase at a uniform rate until the outbreak of the Civil War.”[38]