The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2007 WILLIAM H. MAHONE OF VIRGINIA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY, 1830-1890 John Fabian Chappo University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the American Politics Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Chappo, John Fabian, "WILLIAM H. MAHONE OF VIRGINIA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY, 1830-1890" (2007). Dissertations. 1274. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1274 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi WILLIAM H. MAHONE OF VIRGINIA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY, 1830-1890 by John Fabian Chappo A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: August 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COPYRIGHT BY JOHN FABIAN CHAPPO 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The University of Southern Mississippi WILLIAM H. MAHONE OF VIRGINIA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY, 1830-1890 by John Fabian Chappo Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT WILLIAM H. MAHONE OF VIRGINIA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY, 1830-1890 by John Fabian Chappo August 2007 William H. Mahone of Virginia is an intellectual history of ante and postbellum Virginia told through Mahone as a central figure. While much has been written about Mahone as leader of the Readjuster Party in Virginia in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the present study highlights how and why M ahone-a railroad man turned Confederate general turned prominent national political figure despite humble upbringing-came to be a leader of Virginia. Mahone lead a successful political revolt in the 1870s because he little forgot his rural, economically-disadvantaged childhood, as he campaigned for socially progressive change in the Old Dominion. His management skill and engineering erudition came to the forefront before the war. Mahone’s reputation as a leader expanded during the war, especially after his successful repulse of Federal troops at the Battle of the Crater. Feeding off public awareness and celebration of his managerial skills as displayed in business and on the battlefield, Mahone led a successful grassroots political revolt in an effort to rebuild the Republican Party in Virginia after Reconstruction and in an effort to maintain Virginia’s long-held republican character. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writer would like to thank the dissertation director, Dr. Bradley Bond, and the other committee members, Dr. Glenn Harper, Greg O ’Brien, and Stephen Sloan, for their guidance and comments throughout the process and beyond. Special thanks also goes out to The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) faculty members of both the history and political science departments, Dr. Charles Bolton and James Lea respectively for their comments on various chapters of the project. I would also like to thank the USM history department for awarding me the Willian D. McCain research fellowship for 2005-2006, as well as a research travel grant to finalize the project. Appreciation must also be expressed to the USM library staff for innumerable answers to queries and help in locating materials. Lastly, I would be remiss if I failed to mention Shelia Smith, secretary extraordinaire and master and commander of the USM history department. To this day, I am yet to figure out how to successfully register for classes on my own. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................iii INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. POLITICAL ECONOMY IN FIELDING MAHONE’S VIRGINIA ....................................................................................................... 13 II. YOUNG MAHONE’S VIRGINIA................................................. 33 III. PUBLIC WORKS IN MAHONE’S VIRGINIA.............................60 IV. ‘DOUBLE EM UP’: MAHONE AT W AR.....................................94 V. MAHONE AND POSTBELLUM VIRGINIA.............................. 136 VI. MAHONE AND POSTBELLUM VIRGINIA POLITICS..........167 EPILOGUE................................................................................................................ 209 REFERENCES.........................................................................................................215 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 INTRODUCTION Both professional and casual students of the historical role Virginia’s sons and daughters have played in the formation and overarching trajectory of the United States have had little to want by way of support from historians and historical scholarship in general. Scholars of varying subfields and disciplines have written numerous accounts-fiction and non-fiction alike-from a myriad of topics ranging from the first contact of Europeans and natives four hundred years ago to the present day administration of Governor Tim Kaine. Even today, a basic, yet semi-focused internet search of “Virginia in the nineteenth century” yields over 1.4 million links whereby one can find information from the early Jamestown Jubilees to the development of the Navy Hill district in Richmond to the formation of the Petersburg Garden Club in Gilded Age Virginia. From all the aforementioned, there emerges an increasingly clearer portrait of the people, places, and episodic events that form the very bedrock of professional scholarship relative to the Old Dominion. Yet, despite all of the innovation and erudition, scholars have written little on an equally important and compelling subject of Virginia history: Virginia’s commitment to create a liberal capitalist society within a republican framework of governance, and how the commonwealth’s leaders, like William Mahone, espoused and advanced ideologies and policies that fostered the economic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 and social development of the Old Dominion during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. What follows is an intellectual biography of William Mahone’s Virginia from the twilight of Thomas Jefferson’s existence to the dawn of Jim Crow, or roughly the years 1830 to 1890. Because this dissertation is, at base, the story of one of Virginia’s less celebrated leaders, chronology has proved most useful as an organizational method. Further, because of the absolute dearth of information relative to Mahone through the antebellum period, census records and newspapers have been mined more assiduously in the early chapters, to help provide more context, than can be found in the closing sections. The dissertation begins with an account of Virginia’s political economy from George Washington’s presidency to the advent of the second party system, or the generation of William Mahone’s father, Fielding. Since the beginning of the republic, Virginia’s political and intellectual leaders struggled to develop a political economy that coalesced with a republican system of government. Men like Jefferson took seriously the four stages theory of government, as put forth by Thomas Malthus. Further, leading Virginians paid particular political and intellectual attention to the final stage of the theory, commercial development, because it (allegedly) marked the onset of societal decay. Nonetheless, despite the potential social damage of commerce, Jefferson realized, as had Whigs and Democrats of Mahone’s Virginia, that without the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. development of internal improvements and manufacturing social programs would largely go unfunded because of the absence of an economic infrastructure necessary to enhance profit margins and tax revenues, from artisans and husbandmen alike. Chapter one outlines, therefore, the intellectual push and pull factors associated with economic development in the Old Dominion, namely the Whig Party’s proclivity toward manufacturing and the Democrat Party’s faith in husbandry. It also highlights the struggle that leaders of both parties had relative to their desires to limit access to the franchise while concomitantly maintaining long-held systems of social deference, especially in lieu of the wave of democratization then sweeping