Next to the river trade, the trade in live stock and slaves was the most important element in the internal commerce between the North and the South. Each year large droves of horses, mules, cattle and hogs were driven into the South from the Northern and "border" states, the farmers all over the corn-raising section finding an unfailing source of gain in the demand for live stock in the southern cotton fields. The domestic slave trade commenced to be of importance after 1820, when cotton culture spread among the Gulf States. Slaves were bought in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, and exported from Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Delaware. Though no statistics of the volume of the internal slave trade exist, evidence from contemporary accounts indicates that it was unquestionably extensive, probably reaching a value of $30,000,000 a year in the late fifties.
3. TRADE OF THE FAR WEST
Long before Texas and the California territory became a part of the United States, enterprising merchants on the western frontier began a merchandise trade with the Mexican settlements in what is now New Mexico. By 1843 this trade reached an annual value of $500,000. After the occupation of the territory by the United States troops it became much larger, reaching a total value in 1860 of $3,800,000. The chief shipping points were Independence and Kansas City, Missouri. Transportation was supplied by regular freighters who employed a large number of men to conduct the white-topped prairie schooners across the unsettled plains between the Missouri River and the mountains. New Mexico paid for its imports with bullion and wool produced in the territory, or with money secured by the sale of sheep driven to California, or by the sale of a scanty agricultural produce to government military posts and Indian agencies.
In addition to the wagon trade with New Mexico, the Missouri River cities carried on a similar trade with Utah after its occupation by the Mormons in 1848. When gold was discovered in Colorado in 1859 there was an immediate rush of settlers to that territory, which was accompanied by the rise of a large trade in tools and provisions. There was no regular overland freight traffic to the Pacific coast, the commerce of California with the rest of the country, aside from the sheep trade with New Mexico, being carried on around Cape Horn or across Central America. Within California itself there was an extensive trade between San Francisco and the agricultural, lumbering and mining districts of the surrounding regions.
4. CONCLUSION
The expansion of the volume of the internal trade of the United States during this epoch more than justified the expectations existing at 1830. The improvement of the facilities for communication and transportation, permitted a continually increasing accentuation of a territorial division of labor which fostered the growth of mutual dependence between regions where geographic, social or other conditions led naturally to the predominance of a special type of industry. The manufacturing and commercial population of the Northeast was fed by the farm products of the Central States and the inhabitants of the Central States drew their imported supplies, their clothing, shoes and large quantities of other manufactured goods and general merchandise from the Eastern markets. The South relied upon the North for food, manufactures and imports. The North in turn bought from the South raw materials for its cotton and sugar industries, and the Northern shipping interests carried to European markets the heavy exports of Southern cotton, the proceeds from which paid the Southern debts in Northern States and settled the large unfavorable balance of the Northern foreign trade.
The multiplication of factories in the North together with the spread of cotton culture in the South and the opening of foreign markets to American grain brought about the demand for cereal products, which the agricultural interests had been so anxious to create. When the market problem was solved, the tariff duties were reduced to a revenue basis.
In the solution of the transportation problem the people freely used their political institutions. Nearly all the numerous canals built after 1825 and several of the early railroads were public enterprises, undertaken by state governments. However, the states proved unable to cope with the problem of administering their railways and canals, and surrendered the field of transportation to private corporations, which were helped to carry out the work by generous and munificent gifts of land and money from federal, state and local governments.
Unfortunately the federal government did not attempt to establish a satisfactory currency system. In 1837 and again in 1857 the country was visited by a financial panic due in a large measure to extravagant speculation, much of which would have been impossible had the issue of money been properly regulated.
On the whole the period from 1830 to 1860 was one of great prosperity and contentment. The wealth of the nation grew enormously and for the most part it was equally distributed, there being few paupers and still fewer very rich individuals. The twenty years following 1840 have been called the "golden age" of American history, and as far as concerns the diffusion of material comforts they certainly deserve the name.