Leading Manufacturers of the Deep South and Their Mill Towns During the Civil War Era

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2020 Dreams of Industrial Utopias: Leading Manufacturers of the Deep South and their Mill Towns during the Civil War Era Francis Michael Curran West Virginia University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Curran, Francis Michael, "Dreams of Industrial Utopias: Leading Manufacturers of the Deep South and their Mill Towns during the Civil War Era" (2020). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7552. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7552 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Dreams of Industrial Utopias: Leading Manufacturers of the Deep South and their Mill Towns during the Civil War Era Francis M. Curran Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Jason Phillips, Ph.D., Chair Brian Luskey, Ph.D. Kenneth Fones-Wolf, Ph.D. Melissa Bingmann, Ph.D. Paula M. Kane, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2020 Keywords: U.S. history, Southern history, industrialization, mill towns, reform, paternalism, capitalism, slavery Copyright 2020 Francis M. Curran ABSTRACT Dreams of Industrial Utopias: Leading Manufacturers of the Deep South and their Mill Towns during the Civil War Era Francis M. Curran Broadly speaking, this dissertation explores the intersection of industrialization and social reform in the nineteenth-century American South. It focuses on leading manufacturers of the Deep South and their mill towns during the Civil War era. More precisely, it investigates the relationship between these industrialists, their mill towns, and social reform efforts of the period. In the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, William Gregg, Daniel Pratt, and Barrington King created and managed some of the largest and most financially successful manufacturing establishments in the entire South. These men, however, were more than simply industrialists. They were also idealistic and steadfast social reformers who crafted and implemented ambitious programs of social reform in their respective mill towns. Interpreting Gregg, Pratt, and King in this manner adds significantly to our understanding of social reform efforts in the antebellum South. Moreover, so doing allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding of southern society and culture before the Civil War. In addition to the history of social reform in the antebellum South, this work also contributes to the history of slavery and capitalism in early nineteenth-century America. The story of William Gregg and the Graniteville Manufacturing Company underscores the commercial interconnectedness of the North and the South during the period. Furthermore, by exploring southern textile manufacturing for northern markets, it complements recent work on northern industrial production for southern markets. Finally, the stories of all of the manufacturers under examination and their industrial enterprises reveal that industry in the Deep South and its white wage laborers relied on slavery’s capitalism to survive. Free labor supported slavery in the Deep South. Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the assistance and support of many people. To begin, I would like to thank the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Academic Affairs, and the Office of the Provost at West Virginia University (WVU) for their generous financial support of my travels for conferences and research over the past several years. I would also like to thank the History Department at WVU, the department chair, Joe Hodge, and the director of graduate studies, Brian Luskey, for providing me with an assistantship and generous financial support for conference and research travel throughout my time as a doctoral student. I would also like to thank my advisor, Jason Phillips, and the other members of my dissertation committee—Brian Luskey, Ken Fones-Wolf, Melissa Bingmann, and Paula Kane— for their knowledge and wisdom, which undoubtedly improved the quality of the work that follows. Any errors or shortcomings are mine alone. Special thanks go out to Deborah Tritt Harmon at the Gregg-Graniteville Library, Elaine DeNiro at the Roswell Historical Society, and the staffs at the Autauga County Heritage Center and the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society for their invaluable assistance during the research process. Finally, I would like to thank my entire family—but especially my parents, Francis and Lori Curran—for their unconditional love and unwavering support from the very beginning. This is for you. iii Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 1 – Men of Enterprise …………………………………………………………………. 12 Chapter 2 – The Magic Wand of the Manufacturer ……………………………………………. 56 Chapter 3 – The Coming of the Civil War ……………………………………………………... 90 Chapter 4 – The War ………………………………………………………………………….. 122 Chapter 5 – We Have Done Much for That Class of People, but They Have No Gratitude …. 168 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………. 195 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………….......................... 202 iv Introduction Broadly speaking, the following work explores the intersection of industrialization and social reform in the nineteenth-century American South. It focuses on leading manufacturers of the Deep South and their mill towns during the Civil War era. More precisely, it investigates the relationship between these industrialists, their mill towns, and social reform efforts of the period. Over the past two decades or so, historians have furthered our understanding of the relationship between antebellum reform and the South. Collectively, their works argue for the existence of a strong reform impulse in Dixie in the decades preceding the Civil War. Despite its merits, this body of scholarship has its limitations. Most of these works, for example, focus on reform efforts in urban centers throughout the South, such as Baltimore, Charleston, Norfolk, Richmond, and Savannah, or large towns that were home to institutes of higher education, such as Athens, Georgia and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In addition to large urban centers and college towns, these works focus primarily on the reform efforts of bankers, clerks, educators, merchants, ministers, and newspaper editors. As a result of these patterns in the historiography, much remains to be examined. For example, historians have largely overlooked the relationship between leading southern manufacturers, their mill towns, and social reform movements of the era.1 1 Major works that discuss social reform efforts in the antebellum South include John W. Quist, Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998); Gregg D. Kimball, American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000); Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Bruce W. Eelman, Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry: Commercial Culture in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1845-1880 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008); Jonathan Daniel Wells and Jennifer R. Green, eds., The Southern Middle Class in the Long Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011); and Michael J. Gagnon, Transition to an Industrial South: Athens, Georgia, 1830-1870 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012). 1 This oversight is significant for a few reasons. To begin, leading southern manufacturers exercised immense power over their mill towns, which provided them with the opportunity to be influential social reformers. Whereas social reformers North and South and their organizations relied on voluntary pledges and charitable donations, these industrialists wielded the power to fire and evict employees and townspeople who violated company and town bylaws. In addition, these manufacturers played an active role in the day-to-day operations of their mills and demonstrated an unwavering dedication to realizing their vision of creating orderly, industrious communities. This work seeks to inject leading southern manufacturers into scholarly discussions of antebellum reform efforts. Arguing that these men were steadfast social reformers, it considers their larger social and cultural significance to the region during the period. In so doing, the following work sheds new light on these industrialists and their mill towns. Moreover, it allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding of southern society and culture before the Civil War. The following work focuses on three of the Deep South’s

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