Living a Big War in a Small Place: Spartanburg, South Carolina, during the Confederacy

One: The Setting

1 the setting Located in the northwestern part of South Carolina among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Spartanburg District is made up of rolling hills drained by three river systems: the Pacolet, the Tyger, and along its most northeastern border with York District, the Broad. In the antebellum period half of the adjoining county of present day Cherokee was part of Spartanburg District. Dotted by shoals and in the dry season, shallows, none of the rivers is navigable to the coast. Since the latter part of the eighteenth century the upstate had the majority of the state’s white population and a minority of its black population. Some of South Carolina’s lowcountry districts had populations that were 80 percent slaves while its upcountry districts had populations that were typically about 30 percent slaves. By 1860, the lowcountry was dominated by plantations. Coastal areas grew rice and cotton (on the sea islands and up to thirty miles inland planters grew the long fiber, silky, “sea island cotton” and the rest of the area grew inland, short staple cotton) while the upcountry districts grew corn, other grains, and the short fibered cotton. In Spartanburg District 56 percent of the heads of households owned their own land and 44 percent were tenants; overwhelmingly they grew grains, especially corn, and only a few bales of cotton. Only about 30 percent of the heads of households owned slaves, and almost all of those households grew cotton. The center of the district was the city of Spartanburg. The city was more of a village. It had been laid out in 1787 on the Williamson plantation after its owner had sold the district a two-acre tract which contained a substantial spring.1 The layout of the buildings was centered around a large rectangle of vacant land, which, in 1881, would become known as Morgan Square—named for the statue of Daniel Morgan erected to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of his victory at the Battle of Cowpens. This 1809 drawing shows the rectangle of land around which Spartanburg village grew. Notice the jail on one end of the open space and the court house in the middle. Courtesy of Wofford College Library Archives. The Setting 5 At first the “square” was dominated by a jail on one end and a court house in the middle. By the 1860s, both had been removed; the court house (Spartanburg’s third), was replaced in 1856 by an imposing structure with six two-story columns. Since 93 percent of the district’s inhabitants were engaged in agriculture the village was small with one thousand to twelve hundred residents. In the mid 1850s, the Carolina Spartan, the village’s newspaper, reported that the village consisted of “Thirteen dry-goods establishments; two saddler and harness establishments; two confectionary and druggist stores; one furniture room—any articles manufactured here; three carriage manufactories, five blacksmith shops; two shoe and boot making rooms; three tailoring establishments; three excellent hotels; three commodious churches, and another in progress of construction; two Academies, male and female; two day-schools for smaller pupils; lawyers and doctors a-plenty.”2 By 1860 there were some changes: now there were nine lawyers, nine surgeons and dentists, fifteen more merchants, one watchmaker, one brick mason, Built in 1850, the Palmetto House was one of three hotels in Spartanburg village during the Civil War. Photograph courtesy of the Herald-Journal Willis Collection , Spartanburg County Public Libraries. 6 The District several wealthy farmers and one college for males—Wofford College, established in 1854.3 Spartanburg’s business community grew little during the war. The Confederate government discouraged growing cotton, so agriculture stagnated. That same government bought up the production of the district’s cotton mills, and other businesses had all they could handle supplying local demand. Many wealthy Confederates living elsewhere in the South late in the war nearly or actually bankrupted themselves by investing their fortunes in various Confederate bonds. It appears that the district’s entrepreneurs did not as there was sufficient local capital after the war to promote and sustain a revived and expanded cotton mill building boom and a significant population increase in the city of Spartanburg.4 As to industry and manufacturing in the rest of the district, the 1860 Industrial and Manufacturing Census reported forty-six grist and saw mills employing fifty hands, six tanning establishments employing thirty-eight hands, six cotton mills employing...