This first book to make a detailed exploration of the system of
riverboat traffic of the Delta region, "Steamboats and the Cotton
Economy" is also the first balanced study showing how steamboats in
the early years of the republic performed essentially the same role
that railroads would later perform in revolutionizing the interior
of the nation. Today, the mention of steamboats conjures up
romantic visions of cotton landings and mythological river traders.
Some of the steamboats plying the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta waterways
give form to the myth. Others call forth the true work-a-day world
of steamers loaded with passengers, freight, and sacks of cotton
seed. Such ubiquitous trade boats, cotton, gin boats, sawmills
boats, as well as ice and mail boats, not only helped to build the
Cotton Kingdom but also added rich texture and color to the history
of the Delta. In discovering the role of steamboats in the everyday
life of the Mississippi Delta, this book reveals the vital economic
function of river transportation in the development of the region.
With this as a major theme, Harry P. Owens shows how entrepreneurs
developed and maintained this transportation system. He focuses on
the biography of one of these businessmen, Sherman H. Parisot, and
gives a case study of his steamboat company, the P. Line.
This history of the steamboat era in the region covers a
century, from the 1820s when itinerate steamers of the Mississippi
River mosquito fleet rushed into the Delta for cargoes and
passengers, until 1920 when Mississippi River towboats and their
barges entered the Delta waterways. Between these decades, young
men who came of age along the Yazoo River gained control of their
waterways in the late antebellum period and tried to hold them for
the Confederacy during the war years. Re-establishing their control
in the postbellum Cotton Kingdom, Captain Parisot and his
associates fought a futile battle against the business giants of
New Orleans. During the final days of the era, when they were
confined to the Delta waterways, Yazoo steamboatmen faced the new
challenge of the railroads. By 1900, the locomotive supplanted the
steamboat for most interregional shipping, but steamers continued
to transport large quantities of freight and thousands of
passengers each year. After more than a century, steamboats, which
had played such a vital role in the building of the
Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, yielded to the internal combustion engine
and the era ended.
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