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Show CREDIT SALES EXPERIMENT, 1800-1820 137 slow the growth of Ohio and Indiana. During the years 1800 to 1820 Ohio added to its population more people than any other state with the exception of New York, which already had a large start. The population increased from 45,365 in 1800, to 230,760 in 1810, and 581,434 in 1820. The Ohio fever was at its height, drawing settlers from all the older states to the country which land companies were picturing as a veritable Garden of Eden. Government land sales in Ohio reached their peak in 1815 when 831,098 acres were sold. After this date interest in Ohio land declined. The northwestern part of the state was later tied up in donations for internal improvements and the best of the land elsewhere was gone. The attention of speculators and settlers shifted to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Some well known names appear among the large purchasers in Ohio in the flush times after 1812. For example, Nicholas Long-worth, founder of a family long prominent in the Cincinnati area, individually and with others entered 12,558 acres in 1817. Oliver Spencer, a member of the Symmes group, bought 30,500 acres in the Cincinnati land district in addition to his earlier purchases; Samuel McCord entered 18,670 acres; Jacob Burnet, another associate of Symmes, bought 14,108 acres; Lewis Davis acquired 12,800 acres, partly in Indiana; and William Henry Harrison, a prominent territorial official and later, President, purchased 7,393 acres in the two states. But most of the credit sales in this state were of small tracts to individual purchasers. The inflation and boom conditions of 1816-19 did not get out of hand in Ohio as much as they did in the public land areas farther west or in Alabama, and the readjustments and contraction of the years 1819 to 1825 were not as serious in their effects. Southern Indiana, which was opened to sale in 1805, followed much the same pattern. Numerous speculative purchases were made but not for very large quantities. During the period of credit sales 81 individuals purchased a thousand acres or more, 24 purchased 2,500 acres or more, and seven purchased 5,000 acres or more. Less than 10 percent of the land sold in the territory was acquired by large buyers. One of the more interesting of the large purchases was that of George Rapp and his associates who acquired 12,340 acres for their experiment in communal living. Birth of King Cotton With peace in 1815 came a big European demand for American wheat, flour, tobacco, rice, and above all cotton, the price of which reached the highest point it ever attained. Cotton, which brought 8.9 cents a pound in 1811, reached 27.3 cents in 1815, and 29.8 cents in 1817. Such prices led planters to expand their acreage in cotton as rapidly as their supply of capital, labor, and land permitted. Production moved upward rapidly from 208,986 bales of 400 pounds in 1815 to 349,007 bales in 1819. The crop of 1811 was worth $9,717,960 while that of 1817 was worth $31,684,494. Such a phenomenal increase in the value of cotton and the expansion in the production and export of other farm commodities created a period of unparalleled prosperity that was compounded by the rapid increase of banks and of paper currency. All parts of the country felt the effect of rising price levels and favorable crops. Planters, concentrating upon cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco production, were buying the wheat, flour, ham, bacon, and lard of the Ohio Valley and bringing them down the Mississippi by the new steamboats that were just entering their period of glory. Farmers in the Ohio country were buying more manufactured goods from the Northeast, as were also the southern planters.36 36 Statistics of prices and crops are from Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (2 vols.' Washington, 1933), II, 1027, and from Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, 1960), passim. |
