cabin. A "raising" or "frolic" was
one of the few opportunities for social intercourse in the hard life of
the frontiersman. Between the stumps of his clearing he planted his
first crop of Indian corn; and what the soil did not yield for his
sustenance, he supplied with his trusty rifle. Time wrought vast
transformations in these new communities. The thriftless, who scratched
the surface of the ground and then sold out to a newcomer of sterner
fiber, passed on to a new frontier. Log cabins gave way to frame houses.
Clearings became well-tilled farms. Better methods of cultivation
extracted a surplus of produce which could be sent to market. Along the
rivers of the Northwest, cities sprang up like mushrooms.

From this point the history of the Southwest diverged from that of the
Northwest. The virgin lands of the Gulf attracted also the planter with
his capital invested in African slaves. Once again the small farmer felt
the combined pressure of social and economic forces. He saw his
wealthier neighbor acquire the more fertile lands; he found himself
thrust into a socially inferior class; and again he yielded to fate.
While a democratic society of self-reliant yeomen was developing in the
northern half of the Mississippi Valley, a society based upon a
plantation economy and aristocratic in its outward characteristics was
forming in the Gulf States. Yet in its aggressiveness and commercial
enterprise, the new South resembled the Northwest rather than the old
South.

[Map: The West as an Economic Section in 1820]

While the South was producing staples for an ever-growing market, it
became itself the market for the surplus products of the Northwest. An
active internal trade sprang up between the sections in spite of the
natural barriers to commercial intercourse. Live stock could be driven
to market. It was a common occurrence to see droves of thousands of
"razor-back" hogs on their way from Kentucky to the Seaboard States,
feeding on nuts and roots by the way. Rivers were the chief highways for
such produce as could not provide for its own locomotion. The Western
waters floated all sorts of craft, from the lumber raft to the flatboat,
laden with pork, cheese, butter, flour, corn, and whiskey. The greater
part of these boats were makeshifts, and made no return voyage. It was
not until 1809 that a barge was warped upstream from New Orleans to
Nashville. The entire traffic on the Mississippi and the Ohio was
carried on un