[DiogenesLamp]

Furthermore it was widely believed that slavery was in decline anyway and would end naturally. That probably would have happened but for westward expansion and the invention of the cotton gin.

The westward expansion added virtually no suitable land for slavery. What changed slavery in decline was the cotton gin. It suddenly made slave labor very profitable.

The net result was that slavery, rather than dying out as the Founders thought it would, became entrenched in Southern society, so much so that only the cataclysmic events of the 1860s could end it.

Slavery was paying for 3/4ths of the revenue provided to the US government.

[stremba]

I’m talking about westward expansion in the context of the late 1700s. That expansion would have been settling states like Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi — that certainly added prime cotton-growing land.