The war of 1812 brought a period of unsettled commercial conditions. Domestic industry and trade were stimulated for a time, but a sharp financial panic in 1814 caused a year of general depression. The return of peace early in 1815 was followed by a quick revival of business, and the next three years brought an era of prosperity to nearly everyone except the manufacturers along the eastern coast, many of whom were ruined on account of a deluge of importations from Europe. Immigration to the West set in with renewed vigor after the close of the war. The fertile soil of the Ohio Valley contributed an enormous product of grain, tobacco, fruit and hemp which continued to find an outlet down the Mississippi, and the farmers increased their purchases of imports which flowed into Pittsburgh from the East. In 1811 Fulton's invention was introduced in western waters, and in 1817 the first steamboat voyage was made from New Orleans to Louisville. The effect of this new engine of commerce on the Mississippi trade was almost magical. In 1818-19, the first year after the steamboat became an assured success, the receipts at New Orleans rose to 136,300 tons, valued at $16,778,000, and the volume of exports of domestic products from the southern port was greater than that from any other port of the country. But even more important to the commercial prosperity of the West than the introduction of the steamboat was the spread of cotton culture into the Southern States west of the Appalachian highland. Cotton culture had been found exceedingly profitable in Georgia and South Carolina, and when it was discovered that the rich bottom lands of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana produced even better cotton than the upland districts of South Carolina, there was a rush of settlers to the river valleys of the new region. In 1811, fifteen-sixteenths of the cotton raised in the United States was grown in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; in 1820, one-third of the total crop of 600,000 bales was raised in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. In the western part of the cotton belt, as in the eastern, the planters directed practically all their capital and labor to the production of cotton, relying on the region north of them for provisions and live stock. The market for the grain, pork and flour of the Ohio Valley was greatly enlarged. Flat-boat men disposed of their cargoes of food products at the wharves of the plantations along the Mississippi River; flat-boat stores peddled clothing, boots and shoes, household furniture and agricultural implements from village to village and from plantation to plantation; great droves of horses and mules were driven into the Southern States in response to the demand for draught animals for use in the cultivation of cotton.