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Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom. By Robert Gudmestad. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. Pp. x+280. $42.50.
TheMississippi River network, stretching fromAlabama toMontana, plays an enormous role in American history. Robert Gudmestad sets out in this well-researched and concise volume to tell that story as it relates to the steamboat in the antebellum South.He covers the basics well, including the common use of flatboats and keelboats before the southern steam revolution started ca.1817-19. The rise of trade and transportation in the region became self-feeding during the steam era, as moving between places on the rivers frequently went from months to only days. From 1820 to 1860, steam vessels carried more freight on the brown and green waters of the rivers and coasts than did the total of all of the South's railroads, despite the exceptional growth of the latter in the 1850s. Five of the South's seven largest cities would grow up on the western waters. By the 1880s, however, the railroads had all but ended the use of steamboats.
Historians...