[memph]

One thing to notice is that already in 1790-1800, the census shows that most of the counties of the coastal South were fairly sparsely populated compared to the counties of the coastal North. Even the counties of the coastal North without any big cities like Plymouth (MA) or Monmouth (NJ) were about 3-5x denser than most counties of the coastal South. Only Chatham (Savannah) and Charleston county were comparably dense.

In fact, already then, the inland Piedmont region was more densely populated than the coastal counties.

So what was going on there?