The westbound shipments over the lakes were also large and valuable. In 1836, $9,000,000 worth of merchandise was sent to western states over the Erie Canal and the lakes, and by 1854 the amount reached $94,000,000. After the latter year there was a rapid decline in the merchandise traffic over the canal and lake route because of railway competition. The shipments to the West consisted mainly of dry goods, clothing, machinery, railroad iron, drugs, imported foodstuffs, household furniture, salt and coal.
The trade over the Great Lakes and Erie Canal was without doubt the most important feature of the commerce between the Atlantic States and the interior of the country between 1830 and 1860, but this route by no means absorbed all the traffic. The Main Line of the Pennsylvania canal system, completed in 1832, made it possible for Philadelphia and Baltimore to retain some of their trade with the cities of the Ohio Valley, but this trade, like the wagon trade preceding it, was largely one-sided, the westbound movement of light merchandise exceeding the eastbound movement of agricultural produce. The inclined planes which carried the traffic across the mountains proved to be an expensive and cumbersome device, and because of a lack of better transportation facilities, the trade of Philadelphia and Baltimore suffered constant losses, and for a time it seemed that New York was destined to monopolize the entire commerce between the Atlantic coast and the trans-Appalachian region.
In 1841, however, this situation was modified by the entrance of a new factor—the Western Railroad, the completion of which gave through rail connection between Boston and Albany. Because of its isolated position Boston had not shared in the direct trade with the Central States, but had been compelled to buy and sell through the merchants of New York and Philadelphia. The new railroad completely altered the position of Boston and brought an era of great prosperity to the city, at the same time demonstrating the practicability of the steam road as a carrier of nearly all kinds of freight.
The immediate success of this road was a signal for the beginning of more extensive railway construction, and the decade from 1850 to 1860 witnessed the entrance of the trunk line roads as competitors with the canals for traffic between the East and the West. The failure of the Pennsylvania Canal and the growing prosperity of Boston incited the people of Pennsylvania to take decisive steps to win back some of the trade lost by Philadelphia and in 1846 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was chartered for the purpose of completing steam railway connection between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By 1854, this line, the Erie, the New York Central and the Baltimore and Ohio all reached the Ohio River or Lake Erie. During the next six years these four lines took over two-thirds of the flour traffic and practically all the merchandise and live-stock traffic between the eastern cities and the trans-Alleghany region, leaving to the Erie Canal the forest products and grain. In addition to capturing a large share of the canal freight the railroads easily secured most of the traffic that was accustomed to go from the cities along the Ohio River to the eastern coast and to Europe by way of New Orleans. The lakes and canals had previously made some inroad on the commerce down the Mississippi, but notwithstanding their influence the river cities of Ohio and Kentucky continued to send the largest part of their exports southward until the railroads gave them a through route to the East. After 1855 the shipments down the river from Cincinnati and other important ports on the Ohio shrunk rapidly in volume and even before the war broke out their commerce with the East was much larger than their river trade to the South.
While the railroads in the North were making such marked changes in the course of internal trade, a similar transformation was occurring in the South. Trade between the eastern and western sections of the cotton states before 1849, aside from some traffic in slaves, was almost negligible. In 1849 when the Western Atlantic Railroad began to run trains from Chattanooga to the Atlantic coast, the planters of Northern Alabama and Tennessee, who had always sent their cotton to New Orleans and Mobile, turned to the markets at Charleston and Savannah. The cotton receipts at those two ports doubled in a single year, while the receipts at New Orleans fell off nearly 100,000 bales. The shifting of the center of cotton production farther westward enabled New Orleans to make up for its losses, but the South Atlantic ports easily maintained and increased their trade. They also competed with New Orleans and the cities on the Ohio River for the merchandise trade of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, and the provisions for Georgia and South Carolina began to enter the states overland from the West, the coasting trade on the Atlantic seaboard both gaining and losing by the changes.
2. TRADE BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH
The general character of the internal commerce between the North and South, between 1830 and 1860, differed but little from what it had been before the former year. There were no through rail connections between the two sections until near the close of the period, and consequently almost the entire commerce, aside from that in slaves and live stock, consisted of the trade on the waters of the Mississippi River system.
This was the golden age of the river trade. Each year it grew steadily in volume, reaching a point of prosperity in 1860 never equalled before or since. Until the railroads began to divert the traffic in flour and provisions after 1850, the cities on the Ohio River sent most of the produce collected at their markets to New Orleans to be shipped to Europe and the Eastern States or to be sold to the planters of the cotton belt. After 1850, as the surplus agricultural produce of the Ohio Valley was diverted from the river, its place was taken by that coming from the fertile region around St. Louis, where thousands of immigrants were settling in new homes. Moreover, the loss of traffic in agricultural produce from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky was compensated for by the increasing volume of manufactured goods and coal coming down from Cincinnati, Louisville and Pittsburgh. Thus the downstream traffic from the Northern States, though suffering a heavy relative loss, made an absolute gain, and with the enormous amounts of cotton shipped down the river added to this traffic, the Mississippi carried considerably more produce to the sea than either the Hudson River or the eastern roads. As before 1830, the trade up the river failed to keep pace with the movement downstream. Of the shipments upstream, 75 per cent consisted of articles previously sent down and resold to planters of Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. The district north of these states bought some sugar and coffee of New Orleans, but drew practically all its manufactures and other imported goods from the East.
The value of the receipts of produce at New Orleans advanced from $22,000,000 in 1830 to $185,000,000 in 1860. The largest part of the increase resulted from the growth of the cotton trade. The receipts of "Western produce," which in 1820 formed 58 per cent of the commodities entering New Orleans, constituted only 23 per cent of the total receipts in 1860. But though showing a relative decline, the receipts of foodstuffs and merchandise had a steady aggregate increase. As a cotton market, New Orleans had no close rival. Its receipts of this great staple in 1860 amounted to $109,000,000.
St. Louis was the city of next importance on the Mississippi. Until after 1855, St. Louis remained strictly a river city, almost entirely dependent upon the Mississippi and its tributaries for both the importation and exportation of the flour, grain, meat, tobacco, lead and other goods that entered and left its busy markets. After the city secured railway connection with the East in 1855 a large part of the traffic entering from that direction was transferred to the railroads, and some of the traffic leaving the city was diverted from the southern river route to the eastern railway route. However, the volume of trade taken from the Mississippi was not large at first and the movement of commodities southward showed no marked decline until the outbreak of the Civil War.