place it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom,
recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but
surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern
slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an
industrial system.

The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so
exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to
forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world's cotton
market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic
wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern
development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief
producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound,
81/2_d._ From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the
latter year it reached 4_d._; the only exception to this fall was in the
years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the
English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to
"corner" the market, sent the price up as high as 11_d._ The demand for
cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough had pronounced
"prodigious," and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which,
except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and
the Crimean War, continued until 1860.[4] The steady increase in the
production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822
the crop was a half-million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a
million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the
world's consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that,
in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three
million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856,
and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.[5]

Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the
South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in
1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton "corner;" by the
end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic
foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy.
The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition
many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave
_regime_ in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of
the system and the first