The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without a
break from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge to
the line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clay
and sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate was
moderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found for
which it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was made
available.
In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come to
be occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland from
Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their regime of frontier
farms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred further
progress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of them
bringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement without
changing materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits had
entered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the regime there was not
such as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those of
Maryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indentured
servants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slaves
begat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the planters
themselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake the
lowlands.
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