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.
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.