Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold: Phosphate, Fertilizer, and Industrialization in Postbellum South Carolina

1. Antecedents, Precedents, and Continuities, 1800–1865

1 Antecedents, Precedents, and Continuities, 1800–1865 The rocks seemed to be everywhere, but no one knew their value. Francis S. Holmes was a nineteenth-century planter, slave owner, and gentlemanscientist living next to the Ashley River, northwest of Charleston, who followed local tradition and directed slaves to remove the “useless nodules” from his fields. Before the discovery that phosphate-based fertilizer could reinvigorate worn-out fields, planters considered the phosphate rocks physical obstacles to agricultural production. Industry chronicler Edward Willis testified that most local plantations contained piles of the seemingly worthless rocks and that specimens weighing up to several hundred pounds had been found on or near the surface.Travelers on the Dorchester Road labeled the rocks“stinking stones,”because the rocks emitted a“fetid” odor when broken. Colonial and antebellum South Carolinians found phosphate rocks on both sides of the Ashley but rarely east of the Cooper River. More rocks lay just below the surface. Later, entrepreneurs and scientists discovered the rocks in rivers near Charleston and Beaufort. Three important lowcountry industries—land mining, river mining, and fertilizer manufacture—emerged within a few years. Industry insiders Holmes, Willis, and Nathaniel Pratt marveled that the rocks had appeared as if by holy design to offer“their”state and section“redemption”during their most dire hour of need, Reconstruction. In reality, the revelation had begun decades before. The gestational period for the three industries began about 1800 and ended in 1865. Developments within the American fertilizer industry and lowcountry scientific community during the antebellum era established the foundation for commercial exploitation of lowcountry land and river rock· 10 · antecedents, precedents, and continuities, 1800–1865 · 11 after the Civil War. With fertilizer, farmers realized the needs, scientists refined the formulas, and entrepreneurs marketed the new products. The lowcountry, and especially Charleston, was home to a strong tradition of agricultural science before the war, but slavery slowed the adoption of fertilizer and the development of a local fertilizer industry. The slaves themselves formed the most significant feature of the area’s society and economy but only tangentially contributed to the discovery of phosphate rock as a fertilizing material. Involving local entrepreneurial and scientific talents, the Civil War was both a catalyst and an obstacle to the development of the industries. Emancipation became the major event in unleashing lowcountry entrepreneurs, scientists, and free laborers to exploit the land and river rock and to develop the region’s fertilizer industry. The American Fertilizer Industry South Carolina’s land-mining companies had their roots in the development of the American fertilizer industry. The national industry began as crude domestic soil enrichment and waste disposal, and evolved, by midcentury , into the mass marketing and production of commercial fertilizers —sophisticated chemical mixtures often made from imported materials and specifically designed to improve soil and yield. Due to increasing soil exhaustion, land scarcity, and market demand, northeastern farmers began to use homemade fertilizers in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Mid-Atlantic farmers, especially those in eastern Maryland and Virginia, experimented with fertilizers in the 1830s. Farmers and planters in the Southeast began to use some fertilizers in the 1850s, while midwesterners , especially residents of the Ohio Valley, began late in the century. Price differences (based on transportation costs and accessibility), density of cultivation, and social structure were important factors in the timing of each region’s adoption of commercial fertilizers. Northern farmers were quick to realize that agriculture drained soils of crucial nutrients and that their soil needed active maintenance. Initially, farmers collected manure and other waste materials from their own farms and spread them on fields. To meet the demands of the growing population , especially in the Northeast, farmers needed greater waste supplies to increase agricultural production. Historian Richard Wines argues that 12 · stinking stones and rocks of gold northeastern farmers, by mixing into their fields various materials from the nearby and burgeoning cities and then selling their produce back to the urban markets, fully embraced a“recycling”mentality by the 1840s. In a significant step in the evolution of commercial fertilizer, the farmers abandoned self-sufficiency for dependency on added nutrients from outside sources. Wines contends that with the substitution of Peruvian guano for locally obtained urban waste in the 1840s,the commercial fertilizer industry in the United States was born. The industry switched from bulky, locally derived, recycled material to modern...