t between 1850 and 1860 the increase was nearly
2,000,000. The South had a population of 6,000,000 in 1830; in 1850,
8,900,000, and in 1860 this had grown to 11,400,000. The Northwest had,
however, grown faster than either of the other sections, for her
increase, including California and Oregon, had been from 4,800,000 in
1850 to 8,260,000 in 1860; that is, the growth of the East during the
last decade of _ante-bellum_ history was 21 per cent, that of the South,
28 per cent, and that of the Northwest, 77 per cent.

[Footnote 7: See chap. _III_ of this volume.]

Keeping in mind the sectional conditions of 1830 as set forth in the
third chapter of this volume, we shall come to a better understanding of
the Civil War if the prosperity of the different parts of the Union be
closely analyzed. The people of the United States were poor indeed in
1830 as compared with 1850-60. Between 1815 and 1846 the receipts of the
Federal Treasury fluctuated violently; but from that date to 1860,
except for two years of panic, the Federal Treasury was always full and
there was generally an annual surplus of from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000.
During the Jacksonian era the prices of staple commodities fluctuated as
much as fifty per cent in single years. Cotton was twenty cents a pound
during all of the twenties; it was as low as seven cents when
nullification was the critical issue; but from 1850 to 1860 cotton sold
at ten or twelve cents. Corn was in most places twenty-five cents a
bushel during Jackson's and Van Buren's Administrations; between 1850
and 1860 it rose in price steadily and was almost everywhere readily
marketable at fifty cents a bushel. In the era just preceding the war
prices were steadily rising, and the demand for American produce,
cotton, corn, tobacco, wheat, and sugar, was always greater than the
supply.

This prosperity was unequally distributed, as always. The East had
developed her manufactures beyond all expectation, and the great mill
belt stretched from southeastern Maine to New York City, its center of
gravity, thence to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and from these cities
westward to Pittsburg. Another belt ancillary to this began in western
Massachusetts and extended along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, thence to
Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago. In these areas, or in the industrial
belt as it may be termed, there lived about 4,000,000 mill operatives,
whose annual output of wool, iron, and cotton manufactures alone w