John
An American named William Kelly worked on the same process of injecting high pressure air into molten iron as Bessemer did as early as 1851, apparently procuring a patent here in 1856. But history bestowed Bessemer's name on the process. A Bessemer type converter was set up in Troy NY as early as 1856. But early Bessemer steel was not always suitable for arms making. The injection of high pressure air left the steel relatively porous. It was not until Sir Joseph Whitworth, of Whitworth hexagonal bore fame, developed his hydraulic compression process to collapse the bubbles in molten steel that steel truly became a mass produced product useful in firearms manufacture. The steel produced by the Whitworth process was variously known as Whitworth Steel, Fluid Compressed Steel, or just plain Fluid Steel.
I can recommend to you an excellent book on the subject, Fighting Iron, A Metals Handbook for Arms Collectors, by Art Gogan. This book is understandable by a layman like me, and he goes into great detail about the various metals, and methods of producing them, used by arms makers for hundreds, or even thousands of years. You can find this book at Amazon for $28.
I completely agree with you about the rise of the Industrial North East due to the ease of transportation of materials by barge and canal boat. Indeed, it has been speculated that without the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, funneling the agricultural wealth of the midwestern heartland from the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, New York City would never have grown into the shipping goliath that it eventually became, dwarfing the trade of any other East Coast city.
Water power was responsible for the growth of industry in the North East in the first half of the 19th Century, but it was soon eclipsed by steam power. Many streams and rivers dry up enough in the summer to cut down on the power they can produce. In addition, there is only a finite amount of mechanical power available in any water source, dependent on the head of water. But one could always add another boiler and stationary steam engine if one needed more power for a growing factory. Many suppose that Colt built his factory along the Connecticut river in order to harness the water power. This is incorrect, the Connecticut was never harnessed for power by Colt, he got the land cheap because it was swampy, and he could get iron and steel, as well as coal for his powerhouse, conveniently barged to the site. Look at any late 19th Century illustration of manufacturing facilities, and you will always see tall smokestacks belching smoke from a steam powered powerhouse.
I will quibble with you slightly about manufactured goods coming mainly from England and Europe up until the War Between the States. The textile industry was well established here in the North East, in mill towns like Lowell Mass as early as the 1820s, and Lawrence Mass in the 1840s. In fact, Francis Cabot Lowell stole the technology used in his first mill directly from England. The British were trying to keep the technology to their shores, but Lowell visited the newly built industrial city of Manchester and owing to his photographic memory and mechanical apptitude was able to draw plans for textile machinery and spirit them back to the US during the War of 1812. Mill towns began springing up along major rivers wherever there was a decent head of water, and textiles were produced from Southern cotton, then shipped all over the US.
In fact, it can be argued that the Yankee system of manufacturing, particularly fabricating metal parts, stands in stark contrast to the English system. The Brits believed in individual craftsmen working at their individual machines creating parts with great precision. The Yankee entrepreneur instead relied on mass production to turn out huge quantities of slightly less precise, but still completely servicable parts. That is also why England became known for extremely high quality firearms, while Colt, S&W, Remington, et all were swamping the world with reliable, dependable repeating firearms. Colt set up a factory in London because of the demand for his products. No Englishman set up a factory here.
Lastly, lets add railroads to all that waterborne transportation. Steam railroads were a mature technology by the time of the War Between the States, and the North could not have become the industrial juggernaut it did without railroads crisscossing the country side where canal boats could no go.
