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r Chapter 3 “Fireworks and Flapdoodle”: Municipal Government in the 1870s During the 1870s, as northern entrepreneurs transformed Chattanooga into a viable industrial city, they also faced the challenge of creating an effective yet cooperative city government. Maintaining political hegemony was very important to these industrialists. They had not risked their youth and capital building the city only to have it wrested away from them by other interests. Government, such men believed, was one way of protecting their enterprises. At the same time, city politics also afforded these men an opportunity to promote their interests . Local legislation and city services became useful tools in their quest for economic development. Yet Chattanooga’s leaders soon found that running a city was considerably more complicated than operating a business. The needs of the governed did not always meet with the desires of the governing class and many times in the decade conflict arose over important local issues. As the decade wore on, northern elites slowly lost their grip on the city as events and forces began to take Chattanooga out of their hands. In many ways city government of the 1870s still resembled the government of the 1850s. The 1869 city charter made only minimal changes in local government . Structurally the prewar and postwar governments were essentially the same. Chattanooga was still governed by a mayor and a board of eight aldermen. The mayor was elected by the city at large but held little real power. He presided over meetings of the aldermen and supervised city departments but had no authority over them and could not hire or fire city employees. Instead, these powers were reserved for the board of aldermen. This body, composed of two aldermen from each of the city’s four wards, controlled all aspects of local government . In addition to the duties mentioned, the board also passed all local ordinances , collected and allocated all city revenues, and managed virtually every 32 “Fireworks and Flapdoodle” municipal department.1 This powerful body remained virtually unchanged and unchallenged during the 1870s. The only change of note came in 1872, when city fathers added a fifth ward to accommodate the growing community.2 Although the city government had changed little since before the war, the parties vying for power within it changed considerably in the postwar period. Municipal politics grew more complicated with the development of three distinct political groups. At the forefront of these was the Democratic party. Although regional cities such as Nashville and Knoxville sometimes elected Republican candidates, the Democratic party remained the dominant force in southern urban politics. Throughout the Deep South, in cities such as Birmingham , Atlanta, and Memphis, Democrats went virtually unchallenged.3 Chattanooga proved to be no exception to this trend and maintained a substantial number of Democratic voters during the 1870s. Yet southern Democrats were not always a cohesive group. Disagreements over the issues often led to factions within the party, especially at the local level. In Nashville and Birmingham, for example, the temperance question divided local Democrats.4 During the 1870s, Chattanooga’s Democrats, divided by regional and racial issues, split into two competing groups: Bourbons and Mugwumps. Many of Chattanooga’s Democrats were so-called Bourbon Democrats. These Bourbons were conservative southerners, devoted to white supremacy and hostile to the influence of strong northern interests. Their goal was to- “redeem” the South in the eyes of the nation, rescue it from carpetbagger domination , and restore the proper social and racial order. As such, these Chattanoogans tended to resent the presence of blacks and northerners in local government . They were often allied with the state Democratic machine and worked closely with state politicians to restore power across the state to native southerners . At the forefront of these men locally was Judge Hugh M. Whiteside, a relic of antebellum Chattanooga and one of a handful of prewar Chattanoogans to rise to postwar prominence. Throughout his public career, Whiteside would be closely tied to Bourbon politicians in the state government and would often lead their efforts to increase Bourbon power in Chattanooga.5 In addition to the Bourbons, a second and more distinctive group was composed of northern Democrats along with a few southern liberals. These Democrats referred to themselves as “Mugwumps,” a term usually associated with reform-minded Republicans. Though probably originally intended as an insult, Mugwumps soon accepted this name with pride. One of the town’s leading Mugwump residents was John E. MacGowan, editor of the Chattanooga Times. Of the label, he...

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