Artisans and Immigrants in the Politics of Late Antebellum Georgia

ARTISANS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE POLITICS OF LATE ANTEBELLUM GEORGIA Fred Siegel "This that they call the organization of labor is the universal vital problem of the world." —Thomas Carlyle In 1949, Henry Shanks, die historian of Virginia's secession, wrote an article about die extraordinary developments which took place at the Virginia secession convention after the delegates had voted to secede. During those post-secession meetings, a committee led by Whiggish and previously unionist businessmen and manufacturers proposed revising die state constitution to effectively disenfranchise propertyless whites. The "reform" effort was led by Alexander Stuart, a prominent Whig wheelhorse and proponent of economic diversification. Stuart feared that the political claims of die state's white laborers, particularly the German immigrants of Richmond, were a threat to die economic wellbeing of the state's manufacturers and urban businessmen. Stuart explained tbat every society was divided between labor and capital and then warned that if labor was allowed to prevail tbrough die ballot, the "despotism of King numbers would ensue and die outcome would be agrarianism."1 The conflict between white and often immigrant city labor and slaveowning businessmen created a political undertow which surfaced only occasionally, as in 1850 and 1860-61 when it ran into die tides of secessionist politics. Unaware of this undertow, Shanks did not quite know what to make of his discovery. He noted that die proposals for disenfranchisement were opposed by die chivalry of the tidewater as dangerous in die face of the impending war, but he had no idea of what impelled Stuart and his supporters to make such drastic proposals. Writing almost thirty years later, Michael Johnson noted similar developments in his superb study of secession in Georgia. Johnson found that ' Henry Shanks, "Conservative Constitutional Tendencies of the Virginia Secession Convention," in Essays in Southern History Presented to J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ed. Fletcher Green (Chapel Hill, 1949). Civil War History, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 Copyright«1981 byTheKent State University Press 0009-8078/81/2703-0002 $01.00/0 222CIVIL WAR HISTORY the initially unionist representatives of Georgia's urban interest were in die forefront of tbe attempt to use die secession crisis to disenfranchise Georgia's propertyless whites. Johnson related the call for disenfranchisement to an internal crisis in Georgia, but like Shanks he did not pursue his discovery and he had little to say about die social sources of the crisis in Georgia's cities.2 This lapse should come as no surprise; until recently historians have been as reluctant to study southern cities as antebellum southerners were reluctant to discuss or write about them. Surely this was a mistake—for the historians at least—for it was in the cities of die Soutii that free and slave labor conflicted and cooperated with each other on a daily basis. Georgia's cities, particularly Savannah and Augusta, had a character and tempo distinct from die rest of the state. Georgia's claim to be the "Empire State" of die South was based on die growth of its manufacturing , most of which was concentrated in the state's large towns and cities. Savannah, Georgia's largest port, was the state's main industrial center. In 1860 it had a population of twenty-two thousand which produced manufactured goods valued at nearly $2 million. The smaller cities of Augusta (12,500), Columbus (9,600), and Macon (8,250) all produced manufactured goods valued at more that $1 million per year by 1860, while die machine shops and foundries of rapidly growing Atlanta (9,550) produced manufactured goods at about half that level.3 Savannah, whose population tripled between 1820 and 1860, was described by a New Yorker as having "a spirit of enterprise that could honor any place in the country." Another traveller described Savannah as "the primal and efficient seat . . . of the energy ofGeorgia, "aplace where people described themselves as "plain, old fashioned, hard working men and women, who . . . transacted business before 8 o'clock a.m." A Charleston gentleman found Augusta to be"nothing but a northern city on Southern soil," while an upcountry man suggested that trade be directed to Charleston rather than Savannah because the former was "the only...