own 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 an