The roads, rivers, canals, and steamboats that connected a growing nation meant that people in one region could more easily exchange the goods they produced for those they needed. This development fostered the emergence of distinct, regional economies. In the South, for instance, vast Indian land cessions and the acquisition of Florida ensured the expansion of cotton cultivation. Planters extended slavery into new lands to produce cash crops like cotton, sugar, and rice while small farmers planted as much land in cotton as they could manage. They used profits from these staple crops to buy grain and other food items from the West and manufactured shoes and cloth from the North.

When James and Dolley Madison returned to their plantation, Montpelier, in 1817, they experienced the new possibilities and problems of southern agriculture. Plantation homes in long-settled areas like Montpelier in the Virginia piedmont became more fashionable as they incorporated luxury goods imported from China and Europe. But soil exhaustion in the region limited the profits from tobacco and made a shift to cotton impossible. As agricultural production declined in the region, some Virginia planters made money by selling slaves to planters farther south. However, James Madison refused to break up slave families who had worked his plantation for decades and had no desire to move farther west. Thus the Madisons were forced to reduce their standard of living.

Many white Americans, however, benefited from the westward expansion of southern agriculture. Farmers and planters who cultivated cotton made substantial profits in the 1810s. So did western farmers, who shipped vast quantities of agricultural produce to the South. Towns like Cincinnati, located across the Ohio River from Kentucky, sprang up as regional centers of commerce. Americans living in the Northeast increased their commercial connections with the South as well. Northern merchants became more deeply engaged in the southern cotton trade, opening warehouses in cities like Savannah and Charleston and sending agents into the countryside to bargain for cotton to be spun into thread in northern mills.

The southern cotton boom thus fueled northern industrial growth. Indeed, factory owners in New England then shipped growing quantities of yarn, thread, and cloth along with shoes, tools, and leather goods to the South. As merchants in New England and New York focused on the cotton trade, those in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh built ties to western farmers, exchanging manufactured goods for agricultural products. Over time America’s regional economies became not only more distinctive but also increasingly interdependent.

REVIEW & RELATE

What role did government play in early-nineteenth-century economic development?

How and why did economic development contribute to regional differences and shape regional ties?