Cotton was by far one of America’s most important crops in the nineteenth century. Cotton took over the American South after the invention of the Cotton Gin in 1793, giving way to a new industry that brought it untold wealth from domestic and global trade. New England and the British Isles demanded the increased production of Cotton, and the South did everything in its power to produce as much of it as humanly possible. Both Galveston and New Orleans would struggle to recover their antebellum prowess in the years after the Civil War, and cotton production in the United States forever shifted away from the coast with the expansion of the railroad.
By 1860, the United States was producing over four million bales of cotton in a year, Most of that cotton–over 75%–was being sold to Great Britain through the Gulf Coast markets. Great Britain would, in turn, transform the material on their revolutionary looms, fueling the expansion of the Industrial Revolution throughout Europe. The Civil War, however, turned the cotton industry on its head, leaving a gaping hole that began to challenge the world’s growing addiction. The British looms looked to India to supply their cotton needs, but eagerly desired a return of antebellum production from the United States. The two cities on which all hopes rested–New Orleans and Galveston–were able to rebuild surprisingly quickly after the war and began a mad rush to export the royal crop to as many markets as they could. It looked as though the American cotton trade was back on track, and as if the ports of Galveston and New Orleans were once again the doorways of industrial riches.
During the war, Galveston witnessed her entire cotton trade shut down. She also underwent the horror of losing half of her population during the ongoing conflict with the North. Although the trade in that city would recover, new challenges arose from the expansion of railroads. During the war, the North won the rail battle and was able to cut off trade to the Atlantic and Gulf Ports, crippling both maintenance of existing lines and the development of new lines west of the Mississippi. The Civil War was proof positive to the South that the railroads had to expand past the Mississippi and into Texas. By 1868, the majority of farmers in northeast Texas remained disconnected from Houston and Galveston in the south. The next six years would see rail expansion throughout this critical region, bringing access to better markets that led to St. Louis.
Galveston’s greatest competition came from the great rail-connected cities like Chicago and St. Louis. The cotton centers of north and east Texas found it easier and safer to ship their products via rail lines to St. Louis, rather than commit them to the trips to the Gulf Coast ports. Also, despite Galveston’s excellent natural harbor, sandbars provided some difficulty for transport. The island would also experience devastating hurricanes that would seriously disrupt trade, including America’s largest storm in 1900. It was also difficult to reach the island by rail, as it was separated from the mailnand by two and a half miles of water. These disadvantages gave Galveston’s inland competitors–including neighboring rival Houston–an edge in attracting the business of American cotton merchants.
New Orleans was also a competitor in the trade, and in the immediate years which followed the Civil War, the Crescent City strongly desired to take all of the cotton trade from northeast Texas. That region's proximity to the Red River made it easy to ship the product quickly downstream to the Mississippi. This natural advantage sapped business away from Galveston and toward New Orleans, but it was not enough to meet the challenge of the expanding railroads and the appetite of the cities of the North and the East. New Orleans was even further behind than coastal Texas in building railroads, and the absence of any major lines headed toward that city made a significant postbellum recovery difficult.
When reading through the history of both ports, it feels like an uphill battle in regard to the reclamation of their prominence as shipment centers of cotton. At various points, Galveston would attempt to connect its shipping options with new rail lines, especially ones that traversed through the rich central Texas farmlands. In short, the expansion of railroads and the success of northern and eastern cities greatly diminished the role that Galveston played in the cotton trade of the second half of the nineteenth century.
When the greatest hurricane ever recorded in the United States hit in September of 1900, Galveston never recovered. Houston–the local rival–would eventually take over as the major port for the state of Texas, and eventually would grow into an international shipping power. New Orleans would do better than Galveston, but would now face permanent competition from St. Louis, Houston, and other centers of commerce that were stealing a piece of the pie in the expanding United States.
Bibliography
American Battlefield Trust. “Railroads of the Confederacy,” November 25, 2008. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/railroads-confederacy#:~:text=The%201850s%20had%20seen%20enormous.
Dattel, Eugene. “Cotton in a Global Economy: Mississippi (1800-1860) - 2006-10.”
www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov, October 2006. https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860.
Ellis, L. Tuffly. “The Revolutionizing of the Texas Cotton Trade, 1865-1885.” The
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (1970): 478–508. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30236596.
Lyman, Joseph Bardwell, and Josiah Rhinehart Sypher. Cotton Culture. 1868.
Digital. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926.
link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0100733000/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=559d3e37&pg=1.
Stephens, A. Ray. “Reconstruction, 1865-73.” In Texas: A Historical Atlas, edited
by Carol Zuber-Mallison, 176–79. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma
Press, 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment