Review, III., 99.] in 1793, made possible the profitable cultivation
of the short-staple variety of cotton. Before this, the labor of
taking the seeds by hand from this variety, the only one suited to
production in the uplands, had prevented its use; thereafter, it was
only a question of time when the cotton area, no longer limited to
the tidewater region, would extend to the interior, carrying slavery
with it. This invention came at an opportune time. Already the
inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Cartwright had worked a
revolution in the textile industries of England, by means of the
spinning-jenny, the power-loom, and the factory system, furnishing
machinery for the manufacture of cotton beyond the world's
supply.[Footnote: M. B. Hammond, Cotton Industry, chaps, i., ii.;
Von Halle, "Baumwollproduktion," in Schmoller, Staats und Social-
wissenschaftliche Forschungen, XV.] Under the stimulus of this
demand for cotton, year by year the area of slavery extended towards
the west. In the twenties, some of the southern counties of Virginia
were attempting its cultivation; [Footnote: Va. Const. Conv.,
Debates (1829-1830), 333, 336; Martin, Gazetteer of Va. and D. C.
(1836), 99.] interior counties of North Carolina were combining
cotton-raising with their old industries; in South Carolina the area
of cotton and slavery had extended up the rivers well beyond the
middle of the state; [Footnote: Schaper, "Sectionalism and
Representation in S. C.," in Am. Hist. Assoc. Report, 1900, I., 387-
393.] while in Georgia the cotton planters, so long restrained by
the Indian line, broke through the barriers and spread over the
newly ceded lands. [Footnote: Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights,"
in Ibid., 1901, II. 140 (map).] The accompanying table shows the
progress of this crop: It is evident from the figures that tidewater
South Carolina and Georgia produced practically all of the cotton
crop in 1791, when the total was but two million pounds. By 1821 the