The Political Impact of Great Commercial Cities: State Investment in Antebellum Pennsylvania and Virginia

Abstract

The Political Impact of Great Commercial Cities: State Investment in Antebellum Pennsylvania and Virginia Some time in the late I85os, John Hartwell Cocke, wealthy Virginia planter, sat down to scribble few on Starting Great Commercial City. The James River squire sought to demonstrate that point of land forming the northern bank of [the] James River at its entrance into Hampton Roads could become the site of grand metropolis. He predicted that city established at this location [would] grow with greater rapidity into great city than St. Louis and Chicago. Even by the rather generous standards of nineteenth-century American boosterism, Cocke's effort to show how Virginians could build port that would quickly surpass New York and Philadelphia bordered on the ridiculous. The location for his great commercial city, he freely admitted, was nothing more than a barren promontory without house. All of the city's infrastructure would have to be built from scratch, along with several rail and canal connections that would link it to the Ohio Valley. It is no wonder that Cocke's notes remained safely tucked away in his papers, never to circulate widely. For all of the plan's obvious holes and unanswered questions, Cocke's Notes stumbled upon the central problem thwarting antebellum Virginia's drive for commercial independence and economic diversification. Sounding like modern economic geographer, the Virginia planter argued that thriving cities generated