Steamboats revolutionized water transportation during the antebellum period. Robert Fulton first demonstrated the capabilities of steamboat travel in 1807. In 1807 Robert Fulton's Clermont became the first commercially successful steamboat, carrying passengers and light freight from New York City to Albany via the Hudson River. The Mississippi River became a major transportation and trade route for steamboats. By the 1830s the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, had grown to be the leading builder of new steamboats, which enabled people and goods to be easily transported both up- and downriver. Prior to the invention of steam power, boats had traveled downriver with the current, but they did not return against it. Oftentimes sailors sold their boats for scrap at their final port and returned upriver on land. After 1807, though, transportation on the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers became a two-way process. People moved goods north as well as south. River cities grew in economic and political importance as more and more money, goods, and people moved through them on a regular basis. Besides Cincinnati and already established New Orleans, St. Louis became an influential and bustling hub in America's transportation system. Steamboats drastically changed the landscape of the American river. They created noise pollution and polluted the air of ports with their exhaust. Also because the of the steam from the boat and the new technology, many deadly and expensive accidents regularly occurred. Such accidents moved the government to create some of the first federal transportation regulations. Congress passed the Steamboat Act in 1838 and strengthened it in 1852. The act established guidelines for the construction and maintenance of the riverboats in order to prevent accidents and the loss of life and property.
Holtkamp Gervase, Samantha. "transportation in the 19th century." In Waugh, John, and Gary B. Nash, eds. Encyclopedia of American History: Civil War and
Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition (Volume V). New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2010. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHV291&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 10, 2013).
"Robert Fulton's Steamboat." From: Benson Lossing. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, 1851–1852 New York: Harper & Sons, 1860. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=AHI1223&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 10, 2013).
Holtkamp Gervase, Samantha. "transportation in the 19th century." In Waugh, John, and Gary B. Nash, eds. Encyclopedia of American History: Civil War and
Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition (Volume V). New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2010. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHV291&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 10, 2013).
"Robert Fulton's Steamboat." From: Benson Lossing. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, 1851–1852 New York: Harper & Sons, 1860. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=AHI1223&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 10, 2013).