omic and political power derived from connection with the interior.

But already the Mississippi Valley was beginning to stratify, both
socially and geographically. As the railroads pushed across the
mountains, the tide of New England and New York colonists and German
immigrants sought the basin of the Great Lakes and the Upper
Mississippi. A distinct zone, industrially and socially connected with
New England, was forming. The railroad reinforced the Erie Canal and, as
De Bow put it, turned back the tide of the Father of Waters so that its
outlet was in New York instead of New Orleans for a large part of the
Valley. Below the Northern zone was the border zone of the Upland
South, the region of compromise, including both banks of the Ohio and
the Missouri and reaching down to the hills on the north of the Gulf
Plains. The Cotton Kingdom based on slavery found its center in the
fertile soils along the Lower Mississippi and the black prairies of
Georgia and Alabama, and was settled largely by planters from the old
cotton lands of the Atlantic States. The Mississippi Valley had
rejuvenated slavery, had given it an aggressive tone characteristic of
Western life.

Thus the Valley found itself in the midst of the slavery struggle at the
very time when its own society had lost homogeneity. Let us allow two
leaders, one of the South and one of the North, to describe the
situation; and, first, let the South speak. Said Hammond, of South
Carolina,[198:1] in a speech in the Senate on March 4, 1858:

I think it not improper that I should attempt to bring the
North and South face to face, and see what resources each of
us might have in the contingency of separate organizations.

Through the heart of our country runs the great Mississippi,
the father of waters, into whose bosom are poured thirty-six
thousand miles of tributary streams; and beyond we have the
desert prairie wastes to protect us in our rear. Can you hem
in such a territory as that? You talk of putting up a wall of
fire around eight hundred and fifty thousand miles so
situated! How absurd.

But in this territory lies the great valley of the
Mississippi, now the real and soon to be the acknowledged seat
of the empire of the world. The sway of that valley will be as
great as ever the Nile knew in the earlier ages of mankind.
We own the most of it. The most valuable part of it belongs to
u