rade was almost
magical. In 1818-19, the first year after the steamboat became an
assured success, the receipts at New Orleans rose to 136,300 tons,
valued at $16,778,000, and the volume of exports of domestic products
from the southern port was greater than that from any other port of the
country.

But even more important to the commercial prosperity of the West than
the introduction of the steamboat was the spread of cotton culture into
the Southern States west of the Appalachian highland. Cotton culture
had been found exceedingly profitable in Georgia and South Carolina,
and when it was discovered that the rich bottom lands of Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana produced even better cotton than the upland
districts of South Carolina, there was a rush of settlers to the river
valleys of the new region. In 1811, fifteen-sixteenths of the cotton
raised in the United States was grown in Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia; in 1820, one-third of the total crop of
600,000 bales was raised in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and
Tennessee. In the western part of the cotton belt, as in the eastern,
the planters directed practically all their capital and labor to the
production of cotton, relying on the region north of them for
provisions and live stock. The market for the grain, pork and flour of
the Ohio Valley was greatly enlarged. Flat-boat men disposed of their
cargoes of food products at the wharves of the plantations along the
Mississippi River; flat-boat stores peddled clothing, boots and shoes,
household furniture and agricultural implements from village to village
and from plantation to plantation; great droves of horses and mules
were driven into the Southern States in response to the demand for
draught animals for use in the cultivation of cotton.

As the western farmers enlarged the volume of their sales to the
southern planters they increased their purchases from eastern
merchants. A large part of the foreign imports of the United States,
which in 1816 reached the unprecedented amount of $155,000,000, was
sold in the West. Attracted by the cheapness of the goods offered and
full of confidence in their ability to meet all debts with the proceeds
of the lucrative southern trade, the people indulged in extravagant
overtrading. Purchases far exceeded sales and the specie coming from
the South was drained away as fast as it was received, but dozens of
banks furnished a supply of currency by means of