But in 1835 Calhoun had been convinced that the movement of population and industry was towards Arkansas,[107] and that consequently “we should look much further West than Cincinnati or Lexington”.[108] This he announced in his letter to Hayne resigning from his position as one of the directors of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad in 1838.
On what did he base the view? The Census figures of 1830 as compared with those of 1820 indicated that the increase of population of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, were all greater than the increase in Arkansas, even if the increase of Ohio’s 581,295 to 937,903 was not as great a percentage of increase as that of Arkansas from 14,314, to 33,388 in the same period. Nevertheless at the time when the road was determined to be stopped at Columbia, South Carolina, in favor of the movement to be worked out through Georgia to Arkansas, the white population of Ohio was 1,502,122, the colored 17,345. At the same date the white population of Arkansas was 77,174, the colored 20,865. If it be claimed that north of Arkansas was Missouri with a white population of 323,888 and a colored population of 61,388; yet, if we took the three States just north of Kentucky and across the Ohio River and the State of Michigan just beyond, we will know that the region which held 2,864,634 whites and 29,483 colored was abandoned to build to a region inhabited by 401,662 whites and 82,253 colored persons. Was this a reasonable commercial movement? If it was not, what was it? An attempt will be made to answer these two questions in the two following chapters, which attempt should open with some description of railroad movement in the North and West.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 348.
[83] Ibid. p. 349.
[84] Ibid. p. 22.
[85] Ibid. p. 502.
[86] Census, U. S. 1850, p. 185.
[87] Ibid. p. 185.
[88] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 122.