sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification caused
the region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as the
Alabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement.

Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as
1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians had
been prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of them
had applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in a
hundred slaves and a large number of cattle.[2] In 1777 William Bartram met
a group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower course
of the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "a
vast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi in
consequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards.[4] But these
were merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for the
most part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe market
for its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The taking
of Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and the
simultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. The
influx then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers became
thronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale which
made the "land office business" proverbial.[5]

[Footnote 2: Boston, Mass, _Chronicle_, Aug. 1-7, 1768.]

[Footnote 3: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), p. 441.]

[Footnote 4: _South Carolina Gazette_, May 26, 1785.]

[Footnote 5: C.F. Emerick, "The Credit System and the Public Domain,"
in the Vanderbilt University _Southern History Publications_, no. 3
(Nashville, Tenn., 1899).]

The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in
1810 to 200,000 in 1820, 445,000 in 1830, 965,000 in 1840, 1,377,000 in
1850, and 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced from
forty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on into
the cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas.
Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglect
by reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories from
Alabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the whole
country's cotton output from one-sixteenth in 1811 to one-third in 1820,
one-half before 1830, nearly two-thirds in 1840,