Cracking the Solid South: The Life of John Fletcher Hanson, Father of Georgia Tech by Lee C. Dunn (review)

Many historians of the Reconstruction era and of the New South in Georgia will recognize names like Henry W. Grady, John B. Gordon, and Thomas E. Watson. Not nearly as many will recognize the man who challenged their political hegemony, John Fletcher Hanson. Lee C. Dunn, in this fine biography of the man she styles the "Father of Georgia Tech," introduces readers to Hanson and discusses his life in rich detail. Like many New South advocates, Hanson sought to create a diversified economy that would overcome the region's overwhelming dependence on agriculture. Hanson, however, differed from many of his era in how he envisioned that this diversified economy should be achieved.

Dunn begins with an overview of Hanson's family background and service in the Confederate army during the Civil War, followed by a chapter on Hanson's emergence as a civic leader and his endeavors in the textile industry and the newspaper business. The next chapters focus on Hanson's ongoing battle in Georgia politics with the Atlanta Ring, led by newspaper rival Henry Grady of the Atlanta Constitution, and formidable Georgia politicians Joseph E. Brown, Alfred H. Colquitt, and John B. Gordon. Dunn clearly demonstrates that, even though Hanson failed in most of his political challenges to the insiders' control of the Democratic Party in the South, his efforts did not go for naught.

In chapter 5 Dunn discusses Hanson's efforts to establish Georgia Tech. Recognizing the dearth of engineers and technically skilled workers in the South, Hanson used his newspaper editorials and considerable speaking skills to advocate for reforms in higher education. He also fought successfully to create a separate institution rather than enlarging the scope of the University of Georgia. She accurately identifies that Georgia Tech was merely one facet of Hanson's comprehensive efforts regarding the development of a truly new South. Successive chapters build on this theme, including Hanson's fight for a protective tariff, long the bane of southern agriculturists, and his largely unsuccessful struggles to develop and maintain a true two-party political system in the South, even switching to the Republican Party and becoming a confidant of President William McKinley. Dunn also shows how Hanson's formerly progressive attitudes regarding issues such as child labor began to change. Hanson came to regard such reforms as matters of government interference rather than as opportunities for progress. She concludes with a short epilogue summarizing the personal difficulties that Hanson experienced in his final years.

Cracking the Solid South: The Life of John Fletcher Hanson, Father of Georgia Tech is a good overview of an important yet overlooked figure in southern history. The book is primarily descriptive, and this reviewer would have preferred more analysis of Hanson's significance in the broader southern and national culture. Dunn does some of this work, particularly with regard to tariff issues and changes in the Republican Party in the South, but she fails to analyze Hanson's role at Georgia Tech in the broader context of southern education during the era. She would have done well to compare what Hanson advocated at Georgia Tech with what occurred at Louisiana State University, Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), and other institutions, as outlined in Dan R. Frost's Thinking Confederates: Academia and the Idea of Progress in the New South (Knoxville, 2000). While Dunn does deal with Hanson and his fairly progressive attitudes on race for that time, she might have done more with this topic. Finally, she has done tremendous research in primary documents, especially considering that Hanson left behind no personal papers or correspondence. However, Dunn would have strengthened her book if she had analyzed Hanson against the backdrop of some of the recent studies of the New South and the Progressive era in the secondary literature.

These criticisms aside, Dunn and...