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The Impact of Cotton Land Distribution on the Antebellum Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Peter Passell
Peter Passell
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Much of the federally owned public lands in the American South to the west of the Appalachians was sold to private interests between 1820 and 1860. Land sales' policy remained a great political issue during the nineteenth century because of its perceived effects on the distribution of wealth, sectoral economic growth, and the geographic location of political power. In this essay we consider the marginal impact of Southern land sales on national income. Like all models, our model is only as good as its underlying assumptions. Our aim is less to provide the last word on an important historical issue than to place the problem in a context in which analytical tools can be employed.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 917 - 937
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1971

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References

The author benefited from the comments of Gavin Wright, William Parker and David Grether in preparing this paper.

1 See, for example, Swierenga, Robert P., Pioneers and Profits: Land Speculation on the Iowa Frontier (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968Google Scholar).

2 Ruffin, Edmund, Report of the Commencement and Progress of the Agricultural Survey for 1843 (Columbia, South Carolina: State Printer, 1843Google Scholar).

3 Hamilton, Alexander, “Plan for the Disposition of the Public Lands” (1790) from Thomas, Donaldson, ed., The Public Domain (Washington: U. S. Government, 1881). 198Google Scholar.

4 See Appendix.

5 Wade, Richard, Slavery in the Cities (New York: Oxford Press, 1964Google Scholar).

6 Atherton, Lewis T., The Southern Country Store (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949Google Scholar).

7 Brown, Harry B., Cotton (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938Google Scholar).

8 Woodbury, Levi, “Report of the Secretary of the Treasury” in Congressional Documents, 24th-Congress, 2nd Session (Cong. Volume 297) (Washington: U. S. Government, 1836Google Scholar).

9 Gavin Wright, “The Economics of Cotton in the Antebellum South” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1969) and Wright, , “An Econometric Study of Cotton Production and Trade 1830–1860,” Review of Economics and Statistics, LIII, 2 (May 1971), pp. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar–20.

10 See also Temin, Peter, “The Causes of Cotton Price Fluctuations in the 1830's,” Review of Economics and Statistics, XLIX, 3 (Nov. 1967), pp. 463CrossRefGoogle Scholar–70.

11 Wright “Cotton Production and Trade,” p. 112.

12 Cole, Arthur H., “Cyclical and Secular Variations in the Sale of Public Lands, 1816–1860,” Review of Economics and Statistics, IX (Jan. 1927Google Scholar).

13 Homer, Sidney, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963Google Scholar).

14 See Equation (2) and Wright, “Cotton Production,” p. 119.

15 Wright, “Cotton Production,” p. 119.

16 See Passell, and Schmundt, , “Pre-Civil War Land Policy and the Growth of Manufacturing,” Explorations in Economic History, VIII, 5 (Fall 1971Google Scholar); Clayne Pope, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago Economics Department, 1971.

17 Genovese, Eugene, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York: Pantheon, 1965Google Scholar).

18 Gray, Lewis, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1958), p. 910Google Scholar.

19 Ruffin, Edmund, Report of the Commencement and Progress of the Agricultural Survey of 1843 (Columbia, S.C.: State Printer, 1843), p. 48Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 69.

21 Brown, Harry Bates, Cotton (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938), p. 292Google Scholar.

22 Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Texas, Bulletin, IV (1891).

23 Ibid.

24 Brown, Cotton, chapter xiii.

25 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men: Yearbook of Agriculture, 1938 (Washington: U. S. Government, 1938), p. 86Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 93.

27 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Rainfall Erosion Losses from Cropland East of the Rocky Mountains: Handbook 282 (Washington: U. S. Government, 1965Google Scholar).

28 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men.

29 Ibid., p. 90.

30 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Rainfall.

31 Personal interviews with John Blakely and J. Klingebeil of the U.S.D.A., Agricultural Research Service, Washington, D.C., September 28, 1969.

32 Brown Cotton, p. 279.

33 U.S.D.A., Agricultural Research Service, Runoff and Erosion Studies in Cecil Soil in the Southern Piedmont: Technical Bulletin 1281 (Washington: U. S. Government, 1963), p. 14Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 15.

35 Ibid., p. 14.

36 Evidence gathered from U.S.D.A., Soil Conservation Service, Soil Surveys from ten selected Southern counties.

37 Blakely interview.

38 U.S.D.A., Runoff, p. 31.

39 U.S.D.A., Soils, p. 102.

40 Blakely interview.

41 The basic result is supported indirectly by Wright's thesis results in the appendix of chapter iv. Wright regressed the average product of labor against (among other variables) length of settlement, grouping counties by soil type region. He found that the linear coefficient of length of settlement was significantly negative for the hilly regions, and insignificant for die flat regions. Length of settlement may be a proxy for soil depletion.