The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it was not strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible from any but an antiquarian point of view.
The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the Shenandoah and Kentucky.

The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton their one staple.

The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South.
Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, came to be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostly by farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a large number of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports and others through New Orleans.
This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural regime blending the features of the two national extremes.

The staples were prominent but never quite paramount.

Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs were produced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad.