Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/728

 696 Growth of exports, and of population. [1845-60 the soil itself. There was now practically no limit to production from lack of ability to harvest the crop ; and production increased enormously. The increase of an industrial population in the Eastern States afforded an expanding market for these products, while at the same time the markets of the Old World were thrown open owing to frequent failures of European crops, and to the repeal of the English Corn Laws. Down to 1845, exports of wheat or provisions to Great Britain on any considerable scale had been only sporadic. The beginning of a steady market appeared at this period, but only the beginning, for Europe was not yet dependent on the United States for its regular supplies; and even down to the Civil War the exports were important only in years of unusual scarcity abroad. The exports of cotton still formed the bulk of the foreign trade ; and, exclusive of cotton and tobacco, Europe in normal years took a smaller quantity of American products than the non-European countries. The increased demand for cotton had given a great stimulus to the extension of the cotton-belt, which by 1860 had spread so far west that Texas already had a population of 600,000. The production of cotton had increased from 800,000,000 Ibs. in the early forties to 2,200,000,000 in 1860; and seventy-five per cent, of the crop still continued to be exported. In the meantime, while that expansion of the Slave States was progressing which bade fair to split the country in halves when the final rupture came, a movement in the Far West had begun which was to be of great moment in binding the West and the East together. The discoveiy of gold in California in 1849 had led to a rush of settlers amounting to over 350,000 in a single decade. The search for gold could not be restrained by the mountain barriers that seemed to set a limit to further expansion for agricultural purposes. And yet the soil of the California valley was even more valuable than her mines. By 1860 the Mississippi had become an interior river, and the Missouri formed a frontier line that in other circumstances might have seemed permanent; but, a great State once formed on the Pacific slope, the wilderness and the mountains could no longer keep the two oceans apart. Among the many striking features of the Civil War there is none more extraordinary than the fact that throughout the whole struggle the Northern States continued to increase in population and industrial power. Despite the fact that out of a population of about 22,000,000 the total of enlistments and re-enlistments was over 2,500,000, and that at the close of the war 1,000,000 men were enrolled in the Union armies, the population increased by at least 3,000,000 between I860 and 1865, while over 4,500,000 acres of the public domain were taken up by settlers. Despite the fact that the grain States sent hundreds of thousands of men to the front, the annual production of cereals in- creased. For example, Indiana, which had produced about 15,000,000