How Did The Louisianan Economy Affect The Economy In America

Economical
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 provided new western lands to the United States as well as an enormous opportunity for planters to grow their cotton plantations there. With this new area, cotton dramatically increased and it speedily became the most important and valuable product of the United States in 1815, with an increase in its exports during the two first decades of the nineteenth century. It accounted from 7% volume export to being the most valuable export (E, Horton & Oliver Horton, 2005). By 1860, cotton had become so important for the economy of the United States that by this year, exports of this commodity were estimated for 191.81 of the 250.53 million dollars of the total volume exports according to Rand Mcnally and
However, at the beginning, in the nineteenth century, cotton planters sold their cotton “directly to local buyers or traded it for manufactured goods or other items they desired” (Woodman, 1990). These merchants would then resell it to shippers or speculators. Nonetheless, this system was not effective since it not was not only expensive but it was also hard for larger planters due to the fact that it required their personal presence each time a wagon of cotton was ready to sell, meaning that the planter could not store and hold the cotton to wait for the best price. Under those circumstances, planters began using agents called the cotton factors. Thomas Ashe in 1806 described a factor as a “commission merchants to whom the settlers of the upper and adjacent countries consign their produce” (As cited in Woodman, 1990). These merchants charged a commission as well as a fee for their services on storage and labor. There was a direct relation between the price that the factor was able to sell the cotton and his reputation of being a good
Prices fluctuated subject to the slave´s age, sex, location, skin color and experience. This signified that in Virginia in 1820, those slaves below 13 years old could be sold for $100 while an inexperienced slave with 18 years or older could have been sold for $450 (Ian Beamish et al., n.d.). For any cotton planter, slaves, the heart of the cotton economy, were the most meaningful spending.
Due to the tight connection between cotton and slavery southerners became obsessed with slavery; after all slavery was the means of cotton production. Joseph Ingraham wrote in 1834, “to sell cotton in order to buy negroes--to make more cotton to buy more negroes, ´ad infinitum, is the aim and direct tendency of all operation of the thoroughgoing cotton planter; his whole soul is wrapped up in the pursuit” (As cited in Ian Beamish et al., n.d., para. 18). That meant that the more land that the planter had the more slaves that were owned.
Great Britain's Dominance Over The United States Cotton