The Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina (review)

84CIVIL WAR HISTORY We have needed such a study as Antebellum Natchez for years. And we are indeed fortunate that Professor James' scholarly efforts have resulted in so readable a volume as this one. John Edmond Gonzales University of Southern Mississippi The Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina. By Ernest M. Lander, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969. Pp. vii, 122. $5.00.) This book has the distinction of being the first written about the significant textile industry in the antebellum South. The extent of southern manufacturing, impossible to calculate from unreliable census returns, is demonstrated in this study of South Carolina textiles to have been considerably more than many may have anticipated. By 1849 the Palmetto State had twenty-one cotton mills in operation, and by 1860 the mills were capitalized at $820,000 and contained 26,000 spindles. Professor Lander finds in South Carolina a pattern of growth similar to other southern states. The end of the Napoleonic Wars and the panic of 1819 destroyed a factory system only slightly removed from primitive handicraft. Built back slowly, with some difficulties in the depression of 1836, textile mills underwent a great boom in the 1840's, only to fall prey to stagnation in the next decade. The reasons for this general pattern are not explained. Nor is the book's general thesis substantially defended. In concurrence with Eugene Genovese, Professor Lander argues that although a large supply of liquid capital was available and although profits for southern mills were superior to comparable mills of New England, southerners viewed industry as a threat to the slave plantation economy and shunned it. One suspects that competition from England and New England determined the success of fledgling southern mills and formed southern attitudes more than Lander admits. The most successful mills were built along the fall line or interior to it. The reason was not solely to benefit from the water power available (for in the 1840's steam was equally available), but to escape the areas most easily penetrated by established manufacturers. Although southern capital and spindleage continued to grow in the 1850's, the number of mills did not, probably because the railroads penetrated areas that had been naturally protected markets. This may explain why cotton mills sometimes appeared right on the southwestern frontier in Indian country. It may explain why both Georgia and North Carolina, with no sea ports to speak of, had considerably more cotton industry than either South Carolina or Virginia, with large sea ports. Professor Lander has done a thorough job of researching the tedious government and private records and collating the conflicting data, but a further sampling of newspapers might have revealed the existence of BOOK REVIEWS85 such cotton mills as South Carolina Factory (1777), Winnsborough Factory (1814), Hamburg Cotton Factory (1840's?), and possibly others. But considering that cotton mills were hidden, like much other southern wealth, out in rural ravines and forests, Lander has done a commendable job of locating them and explaining in an integrated fashion how they developed. After discussing the origins of the factory system, he traces the pioneer developments, first in the Piedmont, then in the middle and lower state. It was usually northern and European engineers who built the first factories. The story of William Gregg and his factory at Graniteville is told in some detail, although Lander omits mentioning that Gregg learned his trade in a Georgia mill. Interesting and well-written chapters are included on personnel, production, and marketing. Slaves were successfully used in South Carolina mills from the beginning. At Saluda a superintendent said of them that he had "never seen an equal number of entirely new hands become efficient operatives in less time." Lander reminds us that important in the development of Carolina industry were not only such familiar entrepreneurs as Cannon, Converse , and Gregg, but leading politicians, both Nullifiers and Unionists, who held financial interests in mills. Such were McDuffie, Perry, Manning , Bennett, Hammond, Allston, and John E. Calhoun, a nephew of John C. Calhoun. Joel Smith, who served in the state legislature, at one time owned stock in seventeen companies. The relationship of this group to state politics deserves greater...