[Illustration: The Cotton Crop in the United States 1801-1834 Based on Estimates furnished to Congress by the Secretary of Treasury Figures indicate the crop in million pounds Shaded segments indicate the Gulf States] The causes and consequences of this colonization of the Southwest form a vital chapter in the economic history of the country. In the year before the war, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia produced 75,000,000 pounds of cotton; the only other cotton-raising States, Tennessee and Louisiana, produced 5,000,000 pounds. Ten years later, the Seaboard States raised 117,000,000 pounds; the Southwest, 60,000,000. In another decade the States of the Southwest had outstripped the Old South. This comparison throws a flood of light upon Southern history. The invention of the cotton gin had made possible the cultivation of the short-staple cotton plant, which was the only variety that could be raised profitably in the uplands. Occurring just at the moment when the use of the power loom in factories was giving an unprecedented stimulus to the manufacture of cotton, the cotton gin worked a revolution in Southern life and industry. From the tidewater, with its large plantations worked by African slaves, the cultivation of cotton passed into the region above the fall-line of the rivers, where the small farmer practiced a diversified agriculture. Socially and politically the two regions had always been distinct. The gentlemen planters of the tidewater, with much the same outlook as the English gentry of the same period, regarded the democratic yeomen of the Piedmont with distrust not unmixed with contempt. By excluding them from their proportionate representation in the state legislatures, the aristocratic planters maintained an ascendency which was at once political and social. But as cotton-growing became more profitable and advanced into the interior, the farmer of the uplands found himself pushed to the wall. Either he must adopt the plantation system and purchase slaves, or sell his land and move on. For want of capital large numbers chose the latter alternative and swelled the numbers of those who had already set their faces westward.