the most part, his strength lay along the line of the Erie Canal and
in the regions where the New England element was strong.

About these New York rivals were grouped many lesser lights, for the
political organization tended to create a multitude of able
political leaders, many of them capable of holding high position,
but few of them swayed by compelling ideas or policies.

In Pennsylvania, where the spoils system and the nominating
convention developed contemporaneously with the movement in New
York, there were even fewer men of the highest political rank.
Gallatin's effective career belongs to an earlier period, and he had
no successor, as a national figure, among the Pennsylvania party
chieftains.




CHAPTER IV

THE SOUTH (1820-1830)


In the decade which forms the subject of this volume, no section
underwent more far-reaching changes than did the group of South
Atlantic states made up of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia, with which this chapter will deal under the name of the
south. Then it was that the south came to appreciate the effect of
the westward spread of the cotton-plant upon slavery and politics.
The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, [Footnote: Am. Hist.