“laws that destroyed Southern shipping and ship building industries.”
If you were referring to the Navigation act, (you usually do) which sections of the law discriminate against Southern ship owners from transporting cargo from any port in the United State to any other port in the United States.
The Southern ship building industry did not die due to legislation it died due to a reluctance on Southern capital investors to invest in the technology to build ships with iron hulls and steam power. The Southern shipbuilding industry was competitive with Northern shipbuilding through the 1840s. As long as ships were wood hulled and sail powered. The South had bountiful resources in oak timber for hulls and tall straight pine for masts and spars. Their shipyards could build coastal ships as well as any in New England. But the ship building scene was changing, iron framed and plated hulls and steam power (either side-wheel or screw propeller)were replacing ships of wood and sail.
The South lacked the resources nearby such as iron ore, anthracite coal, iron foundries and machine shops to produce the structural shapes, plating, boilers and machinery that the new ships were being built out of.
Southern investors and entrepreneurs simply were unwilling to spend the money to build the foundries and mills to meet the needs for their ship building industry. It had absolutely nothing to do with any legislation out of DC
I'm not going to get into it again. A year or so ago, I had the good fortune to have someone detail all the various ways in which the Navigation act of 1817 caused destruction to Southern shipping, and it wasn't just the Navigation act that handed an effective monopoly to New York shipping interests. The Federal subsidization of fishing and mail carrying also strengthened the bottom line of these industries while no such consideration was being provided to help prop up Southern based shipping companies.
The warehousing act also benefited New York more so than Southern ports.
Suffice it to say, *I've* seen sufficient evidence and arguments to convince me that the Navigation act of 1817 and the Warehousing act of 1846 both contributed to boosting New York industry, and damaging Southern shipping interests.
But the ship building scene was changing, iron framed and plated hulls and steam power (either side-wheel or screw propeller)were replacing ships of wood and sail.
And buying such from England or Europe was prohibitively expensive because of the tariff's and the navigation act of 1817. The North had an effective monopoly on this sort of industry, and the laws were geared toward keeping those northern industries in positions of dominance over anyone else.
Toss out the law that prohibits the carrying of cargo on foreign built or foreign crewed ships between ports, and trade would have been greatly increased to all the Southern ports. Also there would have been no need to pay the New York headquartered coastal packet shipping that was then carrying cargoes between Southern ports.