50% black at the start of the civil war. Port was busier than NYC for some reason.
Cotton was exported from C-town. I read an interesting history of C-town. Prior to the Civil War, the two main concerns in C-town was fire and slave revolts. The city burned down several times. The frequency of slave revolts on the surrounding plantations was increasing. Prominent politicians had come to the realization that the slave dependent economy had to change. More and more share cropping was coming to be,
Busy shipping, cotton, tobacco, and other commodities to Europe.