Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States.
by T.W. van Mettre.
[1] In this paper, which is a brief abstract of a work to be published later, an attempt is made to outline the history of the development of the internal commerce of the United States after the formation of the Union in 1789. The term "internal commerce,"
though in its fullest signification embracing every purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities between the individuals of a country together with the business of transmitting intelligence and of transporting persons and things from place to place, is here used primarily as applying to the interchanges of commodities among the various sections of the United States carried on over interior lines of transportation--the rivers, highways, canals, lakes and railroads.
I
1789-1830
At the beginning of the national era the internal commerce of the United States gave small promise of the tremendous development it was to undergo during the ensuing century. There was as yet too little differentiation of occupation to give rise to a large interstate trade in native products, and the proximity of the greater part of the population to the seacoast made it cheaper and more convenient to carry on the small interstate trade that did exist by means of small sailing vessels plying along the coast. Practically all the internal trade was devoted to bringing the surplus agricultural produce of the interior to the seaport towns where it was exchanged for imported wares that could not be produced by the inhabitants of the inland region.
As is usual in a new country, the settlers who had first pushed into the interior had founded their new homes close to the rivers, and these natural highways had always been and still were the most important means of transportation to and from the seacoast. At the mouths of the larger streams flowing into the Atlantic Ocean were to be found large and wealthy cities, where enterprising men were laying the foundations of large fortunes in a rapidly growing trade in the agricultural and forest products floated down from the interior.
Living close along the ocean where numerous excellent harbors and long stretches of sheltered water gave ample facilities for the little inter-colonial trade that existed, and where rivers afforded natural means of transportation from the interior to towns on the coast, the people of early colonial days had not found it necessary to give much time to the construction of roads. The gradual inland movement of the population had finally compelled them, however, to give some attention to the means of land transportation and many rude earth roads were built to replace the old Indian trails. These roads were unspeakably poor, sloughs of mire during the thaws of winter and spring and thick with dust in the summer, but bad as they were they carried considerable traffic and their use was constantly growing. Inland towns were beginning to grow up at the focusing points of the country roads, and the owners of general stores at such places derived large profits out of their position as middlemen between the farmers of the interior and the merchants at the nearest seaports. Three great roads had been built into the western country, one up the Mohawk Valley into western New York, and two across the Alleghany Mountains, the Pennsylvania Road from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and the Wilderness Road over which the early settlers of Kentucky had threaded their way up the Shenandoah Valley and through Cumberland Gap to the southern banks of the Ohio River.
The transportation facilities of the times were, however, entirely inadequate to the needs of the country, and the lack of better means of getting products to market was a serious impediment to internal development. Tench Coxe wrote in 1792: "To a nation inhabiting a great continent not yet traversed by artificial roads and canals, the rivers of which above their natural navigation have hitherto been very little improved, many of whose people are at this moment closely settled upon lands, which actually sink from one-fifth to one-half of the value of their crops in the mere charges of transporting them to seaport towns, and others, of whose inhabitants cannot at present send their produce to a seaport for its _whole_ value, _a thorough sense of the truth of the position_ is a matter of _unequalled_ magnitude and importance."
Especially was communication between the Ohio Valley and the outside world difficult and expensive. The natural outlet for the surplus of this valley was the Mississippi River. During the Revolutionary War, the Spanish government had given the people of the colonies the right of free navigation of the river and a brisk trade had sprung up between the western settlements and New Orleans, but in 1784 Spain had put an end to this trade by withdrawing the right of free navigation. The people of the West, enraged at being deprived of what they considered their natural right, protested furiously and appealed to Congress for protection, but their appeals were unavailing and the river remained closed for more than a decade. The only market left to the western farmers was the cities on the eastern coast. Peltry, ginseng and whiskey were almost the only products that would pay their cost of transportation to Philadelphia, and the proceeds derived from the sale of these were sufficient to purchase only a few things of prime necessity such as salt, gunpowder, and some indispensable articles of iron. Even this small trade of the West was crippled when the new government placed an excise tax on whiskey, and the resentment felt against the federal authorities for their apparent disregard of the economic interests of the western people blazed forth in open rebellion.
The commercial isolation of the Ohio Valley ended, however, in 1795, when the national government, spurred to action by the threats of secession and clamor for protection coming from the western farmers, secured a treaty with Spain opening the Mississippi River to navigation. The successful conclusion of the negotiations was hailed with great rejoicing in Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Fleets of flat-boats loaded with tobacco, pork, flour, grain and whiskey began to move down the river. In 1799, more than a million dollars worth of goods were received at New Orleans from the country up the Mississippi. In October, 1802, the Spanish Intendant at New Orleans, acting on his own responsibility, suddenly withdrew the "right of deposit" at the city, and contrary to the provisions of the treaty, he refused to assign an equivalent establishment at any other place on the banks of the river. The western people were wild with rage. It was necessary to send troops to Kentucky to prevent an armed expedition against the Spanish province. Fortunately, the Spanish government disavowed the action of the Intendant and in April, 1803, the river trade was again restored. Desirous of avoiding such difficulties in the future, Jefferson pushed the negotiations already begun with Napoleon, to whom Spain had ceded her claims to Louisiana, for the purchase of New Orleans and the territory through which the river flowed from the possessions of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. The negotiations ended in October, 1803, with a wholly unexpected result--the purchase of the entire Louisiana province. In December, the United States took possession of the newly acquired territory and the undisputed control of the Mississippi was secured forever.
The opening of the Mississippi marked the beginning of an active internal commerce within the United States. The farmers of the Ohio Valley, which was now being rapidly settled, found an outlet for their heavy agricultural produce, and consequently secured a purchasing power, enabling them to buy manufactured goods and merchandise, which, notwithstanding the distance and the inferior roads, could be carried to them in wagons from the East. Though the produce of the western farmers was shipped down the Mississippi, very few of their supplies were brought up the river, because of the difficulty of urging a flat-boat against the powerful current of the stream. This triangular trade of the Ohio Valley grew rapidly. The receipts at New Orleans, in 1807, including the cotton, sugar and molasses of Louisiana, which made up a third of the total, amounted to $5,370,555. The money for which the products of the West were exchanged at New Orleans was almost invariably spent for manufactured and imported wares from eastern cities. Large Conestoga freighters made regular trips from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh bringing loads of hats, boots, powder, lead and clothing which were distributed from the "Gateway of the West" among the towns and villages down the river. Baltimore and New York also shared in the western trade.
The internal commerce of the country in 1810, as in 1790, was greatly handicapped by the high costs of transportation. Taking the country over, the charges for transporting merchandise were $10 per ton per 100 miles and articles that could not stand this rate were shut from market. Grain and flour could not bear transportation by wagon more than 150 miles. The lack of commerce intercourse caused many sections to develop local economic and political interests which endangered the unity of the nation. "The question of the hour was plainly how to counteract this tendency by a system of interstate commerce which should unite them by a firm bond of self interest."[2] Gallatin's report on internal improvements in 1808 reflects the plans and ambitions that were in the minds of the commercial and political leaders of the country, but unfortunately the foreign controversies in which the United States became involved at that time prevented any attempt to carry out his proposals.
[2] B. McMaster, _A History of the People of the United States_, vol. iii, p. 465.
The war of 1812 brought a period of unsettled commercial conditions.
Domestic industry and trade were stimulated for a time, but a sharp financial panic in 1814 caused a year of general depression. The return of peace early in 1815 was followed by a quick revival of business, and the next three years brought an era of prosperity to nearly everyone except the manufacturers along the eastern coast, many of whom were ruined on account of a deluge of importations from Europe.
Immigration to the West set in with renewed vigor after the close of the war. The fertile soil of the Ohio Valley contributed an enormous product of grain, tobacco, fruit and hemp which continued to find an outlet down the Mississippi, and the farmers increased their purchases of imports which flowed into Pittsburgh from the East. In 1811 Fulton's invention was introduced in western waters, and in 1817 the first steamboat voyage was made from New Orleans to Louisville. The effect of this new engine of commerce on the Mississippi trade was almost magical. In 1818-19, the first year after the steamboat became an assured success, the receipts at New Orleans rose to 136,300 tons, valued at $16,778,000, and the volume of exports of domestic products from the southern port was greater than that from any other port of the country.
But even more important to the commercial prosperity of the West than the introduction of the steamboat was the spread of cotton culture into the Southern States west of the Appalachian highland. Cotton culture had been found exceedingly profitable in Georgia and South Carolina, and when it was discovered that the rich bottom lands of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana produced even better cotton than the upland districts of South Carolina, there was a rush of settlers to the river valleys of the new region. In 1811, fifteen-sixteenths of the cotton raised in the United States was grown in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; in 1820, one-third of the total crop of 600,000 bales was raised in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. In the western part of the cotton belt, as in the eastern, the planters directed practically all their capital and labor to the production of cotton, relying on the region north of them for provisions and live stock. The market for the grain, pork and flour of the Ohio Valley was greatly enlarged. Flat-boat men disposed of their cargoes of food products at the wharves of the plantations along the Mississippi River; flat-boat stores peddled clothing, boots and shoes, household furniture and agricultural implements from village to village and from plantation to plantation; great droves of horses and mules were driven into the Southern States in response to the demand for draught animals for use in the cultivation of cotton.
As the western farmers enlarged the volume of their sales to the southern planters they increased their purchases from eastern merchants. A large part of the foreign imports of the United States, which in 1816 reached the unprecedented amount of $155,000,000, was sold in the West. Attracted by the cheapness of the goods offered and full of confidence in their ability to meet all debts with the proceeds of the lucrative southern trade, the people indulged in extravagant overtrading. Purchases far exceeded sales and the specie coming from the South was drained away as fast as it was received, but dozens of banks furnished a supply of currency by means of copious issues of paper money, and the career of extravagance proceeded. The internal trade of the country had never been so prosperous.
The era of good times came to a sudden end in 1819 when the nation was visited by a disastrous money panic. Nearly all the specie had been shipped abroad, and large sums of paper money had been issued, much of it on credit of a questionable nature. The general commercial expansion following the war had led to extensive speculation all over the country. When the new United States Bank suddenly began a vicious and relentless campaign against all other banks of issue in an ill-advised effort to force them immediately to a specie basis, loans were called in everywhere, the circulation was greatly contracted, prices fell, manufacturers and merchants were unable to meet their obligations, factories shut down, mercantile firms went into bankruptcy, banks closed their doors, and business everywhere was completely prostrated.
To make matters worse, the export price of the great "money crop,"
cotton, fell from 32 cents in 1818 to 17-1/2 cents in 1820. The provision market of the western farmers was greatly injured and thus planter, farmer, merchant, manufacturer and banker all succumbed before the general catastrophe.
The panic gave a sharp check to extravagance and speculation, importations declined, prices were readjusted and business soon began to recover. By 1823, the country seemed to have been restored to its former prosperous state and manufacturing in particular was more active than it had been at any time since the war.
Notwithstanding the revival of manufacturing and domestic trade, the farmers of the grain states found themselves in distressing circumstances. The Ohio Valley was yielding a product far in excess of the demands that existed and each year found a large amount of unmarketable grain left in the fields and granaries. Many foreign nations refused admittance to American food products and though the grain-growing capacity of the United States had increased sixfold since 1790, the annual exports of grain, meat and flour were but little more than the average for the five years from 1790 to 1795. The plantations of the South were drawing much of their subsistence from the northern farms, but they were unable to absorb more than a small fraction of the tremendous surplus that was seeking a market.
Agricultural interests sought urgently for relief. Since there was no foreign market for their surplus, they resolved to _create_ a home market. If England would not buy food products from the United States, the United States must refuse to buy manufactures from England, and must, by the establishment of manufacturing industries at home, give rise to a non-agricultural population that would consume the redundant supplies of meat and grain. The problem of attracting capital to manufacturing enterprises, the farmers proposed to solve by the creation of a system of protective tariffs that would check importations and encourage investment in mills and factories at home.
Manufacturing industries already in existence were in no apparent need of protection and the shipping interests of Boston and New York and the cotton planters of the South strenuously opposed the protective policy.
But the agricultural interests were not to be denied. Under the leadership of Henry Clay, the tariff of 1824 was enacted and the "American System" was inaugurated. In 1828, in response to an appeal, emanating from the woolen manufacturers and seconded by the agricultural interests, still further encouragement was given to home manufactures.
While the country was being agitated by the tariff controversy and exceptionally bitter political contests, the New York canals were opened for traffic throughout their entire length (October, 1825). No other single work in the United States has ever had a more beneficial effect on the prosperity of internal trade. The opening of the canals brought to an end what had been the bane of internal commerce for half a century--the excessive cost of freight transportation. Freight rates between Albany and Buffalo were at once reduced 90 per cent and the day of the freighter on the Genesee road was ended. The new canal wrought a complete change in all the rural districts of western New York. Lumber, staves, ashes, grain and vegetables, hitherto unmarketable, were now shipped to the markets of the East; farm values doubted and quadrupled; a stream of people poured into the fertile farming regions around Lake Erie. Not less valuable was the new waterway to the district at its eastern terminus. The laboring population of the growing manufacturing towns reaped immense benefits from the cheaper and better means of subsistence they could now secure, while the shipments of merchandise westward on the canal exceeded in value the receipts of raw produce at tide-water. New York had achieved economic unity at a single stroke.
The success of the Erie Canal and the rapid growth of internal trade which followed the adoption of the "American System" caused a demand everywhere for more roads and canals and a widespread agitation in favor of government aid to internal improvements. The federal government gave extensive aid to private and state enterprises in the way of land grants and stock subscriptions, though it did not engage directly in the construction of commercial highways. The individual states embarked in schemes of canal and turnpike building which involved them in debts of millions of dollars. Ohio and Indiana began to construct canals joining the Ohio River to Lake Erie in order to secure the advantage of the new outlet to the East. Pennsylvania, awakened to the danger of the total loss of western trade through the state by the fact that shipments of merchandise to the West were abandoning the wagon roads from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York in favor of the cheaper route by way of the Erie Canal, began, in 1826, an extensive system of canals to connect the Delaware River with the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. Not to be outdone by their rival states, Maryland and Virginia agreed upon the construction of a canal from Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River, and on July 4, 1828, President Adams dug the first spadeful of earth to signalize the beginning of the undertaking. Some financiers of Baltimore, dubious of the success of an effort to build a waterway over the difficult route adopted by the promoters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, withdrew their support from that enterprise, and putting their confidence in a new and almost untried transportation device, which they believed would prove superior to canals, just as canals had proved superior to turnpikes, they boldly inaugurated the plan of a railroad from their city across the mountains to the Ohio, and Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, placed the stone that commemorated the beginning of its construction on the same day that President Adams officiated at the rival celebration that marked the beginning of the canal.
Thus by 1830, the future of the internal commerce of the United States was assured. The adoption of the "American System" could have but one result--a tremendous expansion of domestic trade. That this expansion had already commenced was evident from the fact that notwithstanding the vast growth in wealth and population from 1820 to 1830, the imports of the United States had exhibited but little increase. "The nation was building an empire of its own with sections which took the place of kingdoms."[3] New England, New York and Pennsylvania were manufacturing the clothing and iron utensils for the West and South. The people of the South were absorbed in cotton raising. They relied upon the West for much of their food and live stock; they bought their clothing and machinery from the North Atlantic States; and their exports brought in the specie which facilitated the commerce of all sections. The West was becoming a vast granary. Its new factories were drawing artisans from the East and taking laborers from the country to swell the demand for flour and grain that had recently been seeking in vain for a market.
The volume of shipments of food and merchandise down the Mississippi was larger than ever and the manufacturing population of the East, already too large to be fed by the agricultural produce of New England, New York and Pennsylvania, was beginning to draw subsistence from the western farms.
[3] F. J. Turner, _Rise of the New West_, p. 297.
Means of cheap transportation, the lack of which had been so great an obstacle to internal development, had been or were being supplied to meet the requirements of the new conditions. The steamboat arrivals at New Orleans numbered a thousand each year. Water communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the very center of the United States was established when the Erie Canal connected the Hudson River to the waterway afforded by the series of great inland seas. There were 1,343 miles of canals in operation in all the United States, and 1,828 miles more were in the process of construction. Louisville was rejoicing in the completion of a canal around the falls of the Ohio; Ohio and Indiana were rapidly pushing the work on the canals that were to tap the regions hitherto tributary only to the Mississippi; the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal was being hurried forward to enable Philadelphia to recover the trade lost to the Erie; Maryland and Virginia were persistently going on with the building of the waterway westward from Chesapeake Bay. And meanwhile 44 miles of railway had been completed and were in operation, and to show that confidence in the new device was not lacking, 422 miles were in the process of construction and 697 miles more were already projected.
II
1830-1860
The years between 1830 and 1860 witnessed a remarkable expansion of the United States in area, population and wealth. By the annexation of Texas and by treaties with England and Mexico, nearly a million square miles of territory were added to the national domain and the western boundary was pushed to the Pacific Ocean. The total number of people increased in the thirty years from 12,866,020 to 31,443,321; the total wealth from about $2,000,000,000 to more than $16,000,000,000. It was a period of great prosperity for all branches of industry. As the tide of settlers swept over the fertile lands drained by the Mississippi River and Great Lakes, the agricultural production of the country increased with amazing rapidity. The production of corn in 1859 was almost 1,000,000,000 bushels; of wheat and oats 175,000,000 bushels each, and of cotton 4,300,000 bales, while the live stock of the country that year, including, among other animals, 25,000,000 cattle, 22,000,000 sheep and 33,000,000 swine, was valued at $1,000,000,000. The exploitation of the mineral resources of the nation was carried on more rapidly. From 300,000 tons of coal mined in 1830, the quantity grew to 13,000,000 tons in 1860; the iron mines turned out 1,000,000 tons of ore in 1860, the copper mines 7,000 tons and the lead mines 15,000 tons, while the production of gold in the far West, which began in 1849, averaged $55,000,000 annually during the following ten years.
Manufacturing likewise grew in importance, the value of its products rising to nearly $2,000,000,000 in 1859. The tendency toward a territorial division of industry was accentuated during this period.
Cotton cultivation became more than ever the dominant industry of the entire South; most of the manufacturing was done in the New England and Middle Atlantic States; the Northern Central States were devoted primarily to the production of grain and live stock.
The development of the country was accompanied by the construction of transportation facilities to care for the expanding trade. A large number of important canals were completed; the Ohio River was joined to Lake Erie; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were connected by a rail and water line; the Illinois River was connected with Lake Michigan at Chicago; the St. Mary's Falls Canal was built to aid the navigation of the Great Lakes, and many other waterways of lesser importance were constructed. Railroads grew rapidly in favor and as time went on they were built in increasing numbers and the construction of canals was practically abandoned. Before 1840 over 2,800 miles of track were laid and by 1850 the mileage amounted to 9,000. The decade from 1850 to 1860 was a period of extensive railway construction, especially in the Northern Central States, where more than 10,000 miles were built. Early in the decade the trunk lines of the Eastern States were pushed across the mountains and through railway connection was established between the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic Ocean. New York was connected with Chicago by a direct rail route in 1853, and with St. Louis in 1855, and in 1858 a railroad reached the Missouri River. In the South, roads were built into the interior from all the important cities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In 1860 there was a total of 30,626 miles of railroad in the entire country.
With the growth of population and wealth, the diversification of industry and the development of canals and railroads, there was a great increase in internal commerce. The trade of this period consisted of a few well-defined currents flowing between certain sections. A large volume of products, mainly agricultural, went from the Central States to the East, and a traffic of less volume but of greater value moved in the reverse direction. There was a heavy internal movement from the Northern to the Southern States and a light movement from the South to the North. Aside from these movements, there was an over-land trade by pack-horse and wagon with the Far West which became of particular importance after the discovery of gold. For the sake of greater clearness, these different currents of trade will be considered separately in the order named.
1. TRADE BETWEEN THE EASTERN AND CENTRAL STATES
One of the notable features of the internal commerce following 1830 was the rise of the trade on the Great Lakes. After the opening of the Erie Canal there was a large migration to the lands around the lakes; in a few years thousands of acres of land were cleared and put under cultivation; the center of cereal production shifted westward; and hundreds of shiploads of grain were borne over the lakes toward eastern markets. Ohio was the first state west of New York to ship grain over the lakes. By 1835, Indiana and Michigan were sending grain eastward over Lake Erie; in 1836 the first shipment from Lake Michigan was recorded; in 1838 a shipment of 78 bushels of wheat from Chicago marked the beginning of the cereal trade of that city, and in 1841 the first exportation of Wisconsin wheat left the harbor of Milwaukee.
The growth of the lake grain trade was exceedingly rapid. As soon as the Ohio Canal was completed (1832) there was a diversion of traffic from the Mississippi River to Lake Erie, and as early as 1838, the receipts of western wheat and flour at Buffalo were larger than the receipts at New Orleans. The repeal of the English Corn Laws in 1846 gave a great stimulus to cereal production in the United States. As the population of the Central States increased and as canals and railroads were built to connect all parts of the cereal belt with the lake cities, the lake grain trade constantly swelled in volume. In 1860 the receipts of grain by lake at Buffalo, Oswego, Dunkirk, Ogdensburg and Cape Vincent amounted to 62,000,000 bushels. The shipment from Lake Michigan ports that year were 43,000,000 bushels, half of which came from Chicago alone.
Though grain and flour constituted the most important part of the eastbound lake traffic, there was at the same time a considerable trade in other commodities. Large quantities of pork, bacon, beef, lard, and other provisions were sent to Buffalo for distribution eastward; hides, wool, whiskey and live stock formed an important part of the traffic.
Millions of feet of lumber were transported annually from Michigan and Wisconsin to all the other lake states; the shipment of copper from Lake Superior began in 1845, and the iron ore traffic began ten years later.
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.