Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/723

-1828] The needs of the West. The cotton industry. 691 the close of the war the population west of the mountains had reached a total of 2,000,000. The settled area included, besides Kentucky and Tennessee, a large part of Ohio, southern Indiana, and Illinois. Between these districts and the great Lakes lay a vast region, still unpenetrated save by the Indian trader, while to the South the region between central Georgia and Louisiana was still wilderness ; but a great wedge of settlement had been thrown out, which, stretching from Lake Erie to the Tennessee on the east, and following the great valley of the Ohio westward, had split the wilderness in halves. The Mississippi had been crossed, and a settlement already existed at St Louis, near its junction with its great western tributary, the Missouri. At the mouth of the river lay New Orleans. Despite the surrounding stretches of wilderness, the strategic points for the exploitation of the West had now been occupied. And yet the prospect before the western people was not entirely encouraging. Their chief need was a market for their increasing products; and their only outlet was by export from New Orleans. Notable as this trade was, in view of the conditions of the time, it involved, besides a sea-voyage after the Gulf was reached, a long river-voyage in flat-boats with no possibility of a return cargo upstream. For the time being their natural waterways did not connect them with a home market, while the natural market of the Eastern States behind them was shut off by the mountains. That the problem of transport should seem to them all-important is not surprising. This problem, however, was not to be adequately solved by the system of internal improvements which now began to be carried out. The great Erie Canal was opened in 1825. It connected the lake region with the Atlantic by way of the Hudson river, and at once opened the eastern markets to northern Ohio; but the great body of settlers were too far south to make connexion with this route practic- able. Before the Ohio river could be successfully connected with the seaboard, the Alleghanies themselves had to be crossed ; and no canal enterprise proved equal to the problem. In the meantime, however, new factors entered into the situation, which made the question of the eastern market less important. The rivers flowed west to the Mississippi; and there was needed only a market at the river's mouth to give the necessary stimulus to western agriculture. This market now began to appear through the rapid settlement of the South-west. It seems to-day a strange fact that, though England had imported cotton from the East before Jamestown was founded, yet Virginia had been an English colony for a century and a half and, with the other colonies, had achieved independence before cotton was exported to the mother-country. The total production of cotton in the United States in 1790 was only 1,500,000 Ibs. ; but in 1810 this had increased to 85,000,000 Ibs. Down to this time the production had been confined CH. xxii.