Studies in American History 
259 
and the eastern seaboard had closely linked the old North- 
west Territory to itself with bands of steel. 
While the consolidation movement was not so pronounced in 
the South, yet it must not be inferred that this region was 
entirely deficient in both long and short lines of transporta- 
tion. Richmond was connected with Chattanooga and the 
Southwest directly by way of the James River gap thru the 
Blue Ridge and the great Appalachian trough, and indirectly 
by means of lines running south parallel with the mountains 
and then turning west below the southern limits of the moun- 
tain ranges. The importance of these lines to the Confeder- 
acy will be shown presently in connection with the Chatta- 
nooga and the Atlanta campaigns. 
In the early history of the settlements west of the Appala- 
chians the attention and the interests of the people were di- 
rected southward, for the great river systems flowing in that 
direction were the only practicable economic outlets for the 
products of this region. At first the products of the north- 
ern section were sent by flatboat down the streams of Ohio, 
Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois to the Ohio and Mississippi 
and thence to New Orleans where they either found a mar- 
ket to be distributed in the lower South, or were shipped 
abroad.^^ However, as western Georgia, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, and Louisiana became populated and the planters of this 
region turned their attention largely to cotton culture, the 
communities from up the river found on the southern plan- 
tations an excellent market for their bacon, flour, and other 
farm products. The introduction of the steamboat greatly 
facilitated the movement of such products and hastened the 
development of manufactures in such cities as Cincinnati, 
Louisville, and St. Louis. Union soldiers campaigning in the 
South during the Civil War were constantly impressed by the 
finding of manufactured articles from northern cities.^^ Short 
railroad lines were built to supplement the river traffic and 
capture this trade.^® By 1860 the states of the Old North- 
west had been connected with the South by a railway line 
passing thru Cairo, 111., to Memphis, Jackson, Corinth, and 
by various connections on to the Gulf and Atlantic ports. 
James Schouler, History of the United States (New York, 1910), VI, 90, 91. 
James Ford Rhodes in his Histon y of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (New York, 1893- 
1914), 375, tells of the scorn for the South of a Union officer when he found that the 
steps of the courthouse at Vickshurs were manufactured at Cincinnati. 
Semple, American History and its Geog^-aphic Conditions, 372. 
