[DoodleDawg]

Not in the seceded states.

Of course not. The fact of the matter is that there wouldn't have been any reason to send goods destined for Northern consumers to New Orleans, as your editorial feared. Goods destined for Northern consumers would continue to go to Boston or New York or Philadelphia.

[PeaRidge]

You said: “Of course not. The fact of the matter is that there wouldn't have been any reason to send goods destined for Northern consumers to New Orleans, as your editorial feared. Goods destined for Northern consumers would continue to go to Boston or New York or Philadelphia.”

The people of the time would greatly disagree:

3/18/1861 It took only a week for Northern newspapers to understand the meaning of the low Confederate Tariff announced the week earlier in Montgomery.

The Boston Transcript wrote,

“It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.

“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.

“The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.

“If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby…

“The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“

“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”

This problem prompted numerous politicians and businessmen to rush to Lincoln to advise him to invade the South.

[x]

There were barges on the Mississippi River before the Civil War, but they weren't the massive ones we see today. My understanding is that most of the power transport on the river was in steamboats of the sort familiar to us from Mark Twain or Showboat or Disneyland. Pilots had to point out shoals and snags and guide the ships around them.

It was only after the Civil War, after more work was done to the river, that massive barge transport took over. For some places, this only happened long after the Civil War was over. Channels had to be dug, snags removed, and on the upper river, locks had to be built. Similar work was done on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Arkansas, and other rivers.

P.S. The graphic comes from a site that is lobbying against more locks being built and other work being done to the river. If some people today had had their way in the past, much of the Mississippi would probably still be unnavigable for barges carrying large cargoes. The heavy volume of river traffic hasn't benefitted cities and towns that weren't able to upgrade their own ports, though. River traffic was a lot less in the 19th century, but towns like Cairo were better off than now.

In any case, midwestern farmers would still have been shipping much of their crop to large Eastern cities by train, because that's where the customers were.

[DiogenesLamp]

The fact of the matter is that there wouldn't have been any reason to send goods destined for Northern consumers to New Orleans,

There wouldn't have been nearly so many "Northern consumers" but for the 60% vigorish siphoned off of the Southern export trade. Secession severs that money stream to "northern consumers."

You can only buy so much in exchange for 28% of the export value.

[DiogenesLamp]

Goods destined for Northern consumers would continue to go to Boston or New York or Philadelphia.

Well, they would get 28% of the imports based on their 28% exports.