25 again say that that was produced by causes which we must always expect to produce like effects; the whole interest of the South became connected, more or less, with it. If we look back to the history of the commerce of this country at the early years of this government, what were our exports ? Cotton was hardly, or but to a very limited extent, known. The tables will show that the exports of cotton for the years 1790 and 1791 were not more than forty or fifty thousand dollars a year. It has gone on increasing rapidly, until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of great product and high prices, amount to a hundred millions of dollars. In the years I have mentioned, there was more of wax, more of* indigo, more of rice, more of almost every article of export from the South, than of cotton. I think it is true when Mr. Jay negotiated the treaty of 1794 with England, that he did not know that cotton was exported at all from the United States; and I have heard it said, also, that the custom-house in London refused to admit cotton, upon an allegation that it could not be an American production, there being, as they supposed, no> cotton raised in America. They would hardly think so now 1 Well, sir, we know what followed. The age of cotton became the golden age of our Southern brethren. It gratified their desire for improvement and accumulation, at the same time that it excited it. The desire grew by what it fed upon, and there soon came to be an eagerness for other territory, a new area or new areas, for the cultivation of the cotton crop; and measures leading to this result were brought about rapidly, one after another, under the* lead of Southern men at the head of the
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