Were there any big cities in the South pre-1860?

[Indy Texas]

New Orleans was the closest thing to a "Northern" city in the sense that it was (for the era) decently sized and had a considerable number of immigrants coming and going. And that was because it is a port city. Notice that Charleston and Mobile, also ports, are high up on the list.

Urban growth requires a commerce and industry based economy, and the South's agrarian economy had little need for cities bigger than what most of them were. There was also the weather factor.

I wouldn't have bothered adding Dallas to that list, not only because of how laughably small it was but because it really wasn't a Southern city at that time. They were still frontier folk defending themselves from Indian raids up in that part of Texas at the time.