Spread of Slavery and Westward Expansion

As a young would-be journalist, Frederick Law Olmsted (later a landscape architect who designed parks in New York City and Boston) traveled across the South from 1852-1854 recording his impressions about the state of cotton agriculture. Cotton production tends to drain the soil of its nutrients; hence, Georgia’s soil was “worn out” by the 1850s. This drove planters west, where they found new rich soil for cotton production, thereby expanding slavery into more states and territories.

Primary Document

“The [Georgia] soil varied from a coarse, clean, yellow sand, to a dark, brown, sandy loam. There were indications that much of the land had, at some time, been under cultivation – had been worn out, and deserted.

“In its natural state the [Mississippi] virgin soil appears the richest I have ever seen, the growth upon it from the weeds to trees being invariably rank and rich in colour. At first it is expected to bear a bale and a half of cotton to the acre, making eight or ten bales for each able field-hand.”