inevitable signs of decay came in the years
1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic
energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible
consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of
plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the
slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with
threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of
the cotton market, risked all on a political _coup-d'etat_, which failed
in the war of 1861-1865.[6]

75. ~The Attitude of the South.~ The attitude of the South toward the
slave-trade changed _pari passu_ with this development of the cotton
trade. From 1808 to 1820 the South half wished to get rid of a
troublesome and abnormal institution, and yet saw no way to do so. The
fear of insurrection and of the further spread of the disagreeable
system led her to consent to the partial prohibition of the trade by
severe national enactments. Nevertheless, she had in the matter no
settled policy: she refused to support vigorously the execution of the
laws she had helped to make, and at the same time she acknowledged the
theoretical necessity of these laws. After 1820, however, there came a
gradual change. The South found herself supplied with a body of slave
laborers, whose number had been augmented by large illicit importations,
with an abundance of rich land, and with all other natural facilities
for raising a crop which was in large demand and peculiarly adapted to
slave labor. The increasing crop caused a new demand for slaves, and an
interstate slave-traffic arose between the Border and the Gulf States,
which turned the former into slave-breeding districts, and bound them to
the slave States by ties of strong economic interest.

As the cotton crop continued to increase, this source of supply became
inadequate, especially as the theory of land and slave consumption broke
down former ethical and prudential bounds. It was, for example, found
cheaper to work a slave to death in a few years, and buy a new one, than
to care for him in sickness and old age; so, too, it was easier to
despoil rich, new land in a few years of intensive culture, and move on
to the Southwest, than to fertilize and conserve the soil.[7]
Consequently, there early came a demand for land and slaves greater than
the country could supply. The demand for land showed itself in the
annexation of Texas, the conquest