The bulk of the cotton crop consisted of the short-fibred varie-
ties, but the difficulty of separating the seed from the wool in
this species of the plant by the methods then in use, was so
great as to render it for the ordinary purposes of cotton manu-
facture of little value. It was to overcome this difficulty that
Whitney addressed himself; and the success of his invention
was so complete, that the whole American crop came at once
into general demand. At the same time, while these causes
were conducing to a great increase in the general consumption
of cotton, a vast territory, eminently adapted for the cultivation
as well of this as of most other slave products, came into the
possession of the United States. The combined effect of all
these occurrences was to give an extraordinary impulse to the
cultivation of cotton ; and cotton being pre-eminently a slave
product, and moreover only suited to those districts of the
United States where slavery was already established, this was
followed by a corresponding extension of slavery. In a few
years after Whitney's invention, the exports of cotton from the
United States were decupled ; by the year 1810, they had been
multiplied more than a hundredfold, and, from being a product
of small account, cotton rapidly rose to be the principal staple
of the Southern States.
The early progress of the Southern planters, under the stimu-
lus thus given to their enterprise, attracted little observation.
