Lilly Buttrick, travelling in Tennessee from 1812 to 1819, speaks of stopping with an Indian slave owner by the name of Talbot, who lived on the bank of the Tennessee. “This man,” he says, “was said to be very rich, in land, cattle, and negro slaves, and also to have large sums of money in the bank.”[35]
The culture of cotton was profitable from the very beginning of the state down to 1860. As early as July, 1797, Mr. Miller of the firm of Miller and Whitney, proposed to his partner that they send an agent to Knoxville, “where we were informed that cotton was valuable,” and to Nashville and the Cumberland settlements to gather information concerning the culture of cotton in those parts and the mode of cleaning it.[36] As soon as the people of these frontier settlements learned that the cotton gin was a success, they held public meetings and petitioned the legislature of Tennessee to buy the patent rights of Miller and Whitney to the saw-gin within the limits of Tennessee. Andrew Jackson presided at some of these meetings.[37] In accordance with the wishes of the people, the legislature purchased the patent rights for the gin within the limits of Tennessee in 1803, and the state began to encourage the growth of cotton. “Cotton production in this state,” says Hammond, “with the exception of a few years in the 40’s, continued to increase at a uniform rate until the outbreak of the Civil War.”[38]
A. D. Murphrey, a North Carolinian, travelling through West Tennessee in 1822, and writing to his friend, Thomas Ruffin, left the following account of the soil and the profits in farming in West Tennessee: “Since I wrote you last I have been through nearly one-half of the Chickashaw Purchase, and if I was disappointed as to old Tennessee, I was still more as to the Purchase; but my disappointment was of another kind. I have never seen such a beautiful country before, nor one where industry can be so well rewarded. It is very much like Mecklenburg and Cararrus were, I expect, a hundred years ago, in their appearance; but there is a fertility in its poorest soil that I have seen nowhere else. Except the swamp, there is really no poor land, if we are to judge from its production; for on the poorest ridges that I have seen, six and eight barrels of corn, or 1000 pounds of cotton is the ordinary crop. What is there called good land brings upon an average 10 barrels of corn or 1300 pounds of cotton to the acre; and one hand will tend more land than two in any part of North Carolina west of Raleigh. I have just left the house of a Mr. Morgan on Sandy River, who is now working his second crop and works four hands. He has prepared 80 acres of this ground since Xmas, 1821 (this was July, 1822), and his crop of corn, without severe disaster, will be 1000 barrels.... The soil is rich, black land, varying in depth from four to ten inches; then comes a good clay—not a stone or pebble to be seen.”[39]
The Nashville Banner in 1833, in a discussion on the prosperity of Tennessee, boasted that “the profits alone” on the crop of cotton, in the present year, “will pay the whole aggregate debt of Tennessee and leave a large balance in favor of the country.”[40]
In the reports made to the Comptroller, and inventories given in the proceedings of the county and district fairs, there are numerous examples of individuals who, with a few slaves, purchased lands, cleared and stocked them, and made big money in farming. The following is a detailed account of what a Middle Tennessee planter did, who in 1838 had twenty-two negroes, only fifteen of whom were field hands: “He cleared nine hundred acres of land ... made all his improvements, consisting of a dwelling house, kitchen, washhouse, storehouse, office, smokehouse, the necessary negro houses for servants’ houses about his dwelling, weaving, ice and poultry houses, a gin house forty by sixty feet, a building forty feet square with driving power attached,” from which was propelled the following machinery: a flouring mill which ground and bolted from seventy to eighty bushels of wheat per day, a corn mill which ground from ninety to one hundred bushels of corn per day, a knife that cut food for his stock, a corn sheller, a wheat thresher, with a 300-bushel capacity per day for wheat and 200 bushels for rye, a saw mill that cut from one to two thousand feet of lumber per day; “barns, stables, cribs, overseer’s home, negro cabins, and outhouses.”[41] This planter furnished the flour for his family and negroes and sold a surplus to cotton planters sufficient to pay the cost of his machinery and the salary of his overseer. He raised all the live stock that the plantation needed, and sold immense quantities of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine.
His capital increased at the rate of 169 per cent per annum, yet “he never made a speculation of any kind whatever during all this time of prosperity, to buy and sell again. He lived generously, while some of his friends charged him with extravagance in many things. His farming interest did it all, under its own progression, and is entitled as a pursuit or business, after the support of himself and family, which under the peculiar visitations of Providence, added necessarily to his expenses, to all the credit.”[42]
This planter was active in politics, and acted as administrator of the estates of several of his friends. He managed his plantation so successfully that he never gave cause for a change of overseers, nor did he have any trouble with his slaves. He was a type of the Middle Tennessee planters.
This planter was Mark C. Cockrill. He was famous for the grade of wool that he grew. He exhibited a wool at the World’s Fair in London that for its texture, quality, and fineness excelled the wool from Saxony, from which the best English broadcloths have been made. He returned with the premium, certificates, and medals to be still further rewarded by the legislature of his own state with a gold medal for his enterprise and the prosperity he had brought to the wool-growers of the state.[43]
There were equally famous public-spirited cotton planters of West Tennessee, Pope, Holmes, Poynor, and Bond, planters of Fayette County and Shelby County, at this same World’s Fair, who changed the classification and commercial character of American cottons. They were able to place Tennessee cotton next to the Georgia Sea Island, giving it the highest grade of upland cotton. This meant considerable wealth to Tennessee. Both Pope and Holmes received medals at the fair. These planters, in coöperation with David Park, a cotton factor of Memphis, distributed among several factories of the East a large amount of Tennessee cotton to be experimented with, in order to test its superior grade. This gave Tennessee cotton a great reputation, and made Memphis a joint distributing-point for the sale of cotton. Cotton began to come up the Mississippi to Memphis to be distributed over the entire world. This was the beginning of the movement that has finally made Memphis the greatest inland cotton market in the world.
Comparing these cotton planters with the Middle Tennessee planter referred to above, James C. Coggesball, the author of this paper, says, “I must certainly be permitted to speak as to the circumstances of several whose success surpasses his in a four-fold extent.” “And just here,” he says, “permit me to add as my opinion that there is not to be found a location in the United States where a farming community, taking them as a body, is as independent and intelligent as they are in the western district. The public days at the county seats exhibit but few scenes of impropriety emanating from them, while the sheriff’s and constable’s advertisements seldom have reference to their estates.”[44]