franklin's lucrative business so cotton wasn't just cotton. cotton meant enslaved people and that made the population of west tennessee grow so rapidly. let's move forward fast to secession and the civil war. east tennessee, mom and pop farms, no need for enslaved people, they can't raise cotton, the land is not right. it is hard subsistence farming. west tennessee are grow cultural abundance, lots of cotton being raised over there and in middle tennessee, we are the pivot of the seesaw if you will. are we going to vote with west tennessee on issues or east tennessee on issues? they have different economic goals. so when talk of secession began after abraham lincoln was elected president, south carolina just to raise out of the union tennessee's legislature is going to convene to talk about whether or not tennessee should secede. you can understand who is going to be most pro secession, west tennessee legislators. east tennessee not so much. it is up to middle tennessee. the legislature did not want to take a vote and be responsible for this.

franklin, it became very wealthy buying slaves in alexandria, virginia, and transporting them initially he made them walkti by the writer here. and then they put them on those later and took them on boats and took them around florida and new orleans and of the river. but he became one of the wealthiest men in the country in the slave business there's a new book called the venture in the chain which the historian is taken all of the financial records pretty this was such tedious work and really combed through their and draws the conclusion about isaac franklin in the business in slaves predict so cotton was not just cotton, it meant slaved people that's what brought the population that's what it in the city to grow so rapidly. let's move forward fast to the civil war. east tennessee, mom-and-pop farms and no need for cotton, no need for enslaved people, they can't raise cotton over there but weather is not right in the land is not right, it's persistent farming. an agricultural abundance, lots and lots of cotton being raised over there and here in middleton, the city where sort of the se