![]() ![]() Steamboats sometimes sank due to snags, fires, or sunken logs –or, more spectacularly, due to boiler explosions. Increased mobility, of course, also led to an increase in accidents. In addition to cabin passengers, who received board and hotel-quality treatment, steamboats were also open to deck passengers who spent the voyage among the freight. Personal travel became far easier, and therefore more common, as well. New river ports opened up, and landings appeared all along the rivers in 1857 there were 81 landings between Yazoo City and Greenwood. In addition, farmers could now acquire the goods they needed for their operations with much greater facility. With steamboats going up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries, and railroads being built, costs diminished and profits expanded significantly. As this coincided with increased emigration to fertile lands in the Mississippi River Valley and technological improvements such as the cotton gin –and the removal of the Choctaws to Indian Territory, for the most part by steamboat –the production of cotton in the Valley blossomed. In the North these new forms of transportation became linked to greater general industrialization in the South, for the most part, it led to greater distribution for agricultural goods. This changed in the years after the War of 1812 due to what has since been christened “the Transportation Revolution.” New technologies led to the improvement of roads, the building of canals, and the advent of railroads and steamboats. The pilots who had brought the goods then had to return by foot, often along overland routes such as the Natchez Trace –a route whose inherent dangers earned it the sobriquet “The Devil's Backbone.” Delivering goods inland was even more challenging, and usually impracticable. ![]() Agricultural goods could reach eastern markets only with great difficulty: they were usually floated down the Mississippi on rafts, and upon arriving at New Orleans or other port towns they were loaded on ships bound for more settled areas. ![]() This was problematic in the early days of American settlement in the Mississippi River Valley. In order for economic growth to develop, there must be producers, sellers, and buyers –and some way for them all to be connected. Vernon Burton, Troy Smith, and Simon Appleford, University of Illinois The Golden Age of the Steamboat, 1851-1900īy O. ![]()
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