n the wheat-growers of Virginia and
Maryland became again prosperous when the great canals and the improved
turnpikes reached the valley of Virginia and opened still wider areas of
rich lands to the Richmond and Baltimore markets. The plantation form of
life penetrated the high lands of Virginia almost to the Tennessee
border, and slavery was fastening its hold upon the up-country people
who had formerly been hostile.

[Illustration: Tobacco Areas in 1840]

[Illustration: Cotton Areas in 1840]

But the vast cotton region, embracing the better part of middle and
eastern North Carolina and the accessible lands of the lower South to
Eastern Texas, and extending over most of the Mississippi Valley to St.
Louis, was the heart of the South, which supported the Polk
Administration and waged the war upon Mexico soon to begin. In this fine
country, men of ability made fortunes in a few years and learned to
imitate the life of the old southern manor houses. Forests were cleared
away in winter by the sturdy hands of slaves, and new fields were opened
to cotton culture each spring to supply the places of those that had
been rapidly worn down by unscientific methods of agriculture. The
cabins which made the homes of well-to-do men in the Jeffersonian epoch
gave way to substantial frame houses with massive columns and wide
verandas, with great hallways and broad banquet-rooms, which so much
delighted the heart of the planter of Calhoun's day. In a warm climate
like that of the cotton region the object of the builder was always to
attain cool recesses and retired gardens, where the social life of the
time displayed itself.

The houses were built on hilltops covered with primeval oaks, which cast
a dense shade over all. Sometimes stone or brick walls protected the
premises against the outer world, and wide entrances, guarded on either
side by sculptured lions or tigers, gave a dignity and a splendor which
reminded one of the estates of English noblemen. In the rear of these
pretentious and sometimes beautiful houses were the rows of negro
cabins, with their little gardens for the raising of vegetables and the
ranges for chickens, as dear to the palates of negro slaves as to those
of visiting clergymen. The barns and carriage houses completed the
outfit. Where hundreds of bales of cotton and thousands of barrels of
corn were grown annually, there would be driving or saddle horses for
the master's family and many Kentucky mules for t