But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression of the cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, by rushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, had spoiled the market.  Each region, said he, ought to devote itself to the staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis of profitable commerce.  The proper policy for Virginia and most of North Carolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in her peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance of cotton prices throughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the regime went on virtually unchanged.  As an evidence of the specialization of the Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to three and a half million pounds.[15]

[Footnote 14:  Southern Agriculturist, I, 61.]

[Footnote 15:  Niles’ Register, LI, 46.]

The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound for their crops.  Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh to study the means of salvation.  Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to recommending improvements.  Private citizens made experiments on their estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals published their reports and advice.  Most prominent among the cotton belt planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H. Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B.  Cloud of Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi.  Of these, Hammond was chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was an all-round experimenter and propagandist.  Hammond and Philips, who were both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous records in print and manuscript.  Their careers illustrate the handicaps under which innovators labored.

Hammond’s estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some sixteen miles below Augusta.  Impressed by the depletion of his upland soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the time being sought relief at home through the improvement