-American manufacturing
-Settling new territories
-The Indian removal policy
-The spread of cotton farming

[SLIDE 1]

Although the British and Canadians wouldn't have agreed, Americans felt they had won the war. Having trounced Britain at the Battle of New Orleans, Americans emerged from the war with a sense of pride and confidence. The embargos in the terms of Jefferson and Madison had created an unexpected result, one that went against the grain of what Jefferson had intended. Unable to trade with Europe, Americans had begun creating what they needed for themselves. The textile industry in particular developed. It had previously been uneconomical to develop an American textile industry, but once Jefferson's 1807 embargo went into effect in 1808, the economics of the situation changed. In only one year, the number of cotton mills for spinning or weaving cloth increased dramatically. These were mostly located in New England. Then, Francis Cabot Lowell, having smuggled design plans back to England, built the first mechanized textile factory in Waltham, Massachusetts, including all aspects of fabric making in one location. The number of people involved in manufacturing of different items leaped by the tens of thousands in very short order.

[SLIDE 2]

Indians had by now been forced to cede tremendous amounts of land to the west, and the threat of violence had receded. With the efforts to create a pan-Indian resistance now destroyed, there was no means to launch effective resistance to white settlement. Settlers, mainly small farmers, now poured into the new territories by the hundreds of thousands. Adventurers like John Jacob Astor and the Chouteau brothers built financial empires from fur trading and real estate speculation. Saint Louis was founded as a fur-trading center located on the Mississippi River on the border with Illinois. In 1870 it was the fourth-largest city in the United States.

[SLIDE 3]

Months after the Battle of Horseshoe Creek, the Treaty of Fort Jackson ended the Creek War. The Creeks were forced to give up 22 million acres in Alabama and Georgia, without payment. This result removed any impediment to westward settlement in the south. From north to south, the ability of Indians to offer resistance had been suppressed.

[SLIDE 4]

When in 1815, Indian tribes who had fought alongside the British signed peace accords with the U.S., the U.S. government was principally interested in removing them from tribal land between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers that the government had already given away as enlistment bonuses to attract new recruits. Indian agents tried every maneuver to coerce Indians to leave their lands, finally succeeding with the Kickapoo in Illinois and followed over the years by many others. The name of Auguste Chouteau is on the Treaty of Edwardsville as a representative of the U.S. government.

[SLIDE 5]

Mechanization of the textile industry brought an enormous demand for cotton. Southern planters had long been growing cotton, but the growing area where profitable long-staple cotton could be grown was small. The area where short-staple cotton could be grown was vast, but that type of boll was too difficult to process to be profitable. When in 1793 Eli Whitney found a way to make short-staple cotton profitable, land owners throughout inland South Carolina and Georgia began to grow it. After the war, with the removal of Britain's blockade of American shipping, the demand for cotton skyrocketed.

[SLIDE 6]

Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821. Spanish authorities had given permission to Moses Austin for Americans to begin settling land grant areas in East Texas, and that grant was subsequently confirmed by the new Mexican authorities. The newly settled areas were then planted in cotton.

[SLIDE 7]

Before cotton gained importance, slavery and the plantation system were foundering. Many southerners had begun to question slavery. Some southerners wanted to abolish slavery and transport freed blacks to Africa. In 1784, Jefferson had proposed an ordinance to prohibit slavery after 1800. Unfortunately, his proposal was defeated. After the War of 1812, the south experienced an economic boom based on cotton. Southern farmers all turned for their sustenance to cotton. Cotton growing required slaves, and so slavery expanded. The interstate slave trade spread along with the spread of cotton.