Author : Mark V. Wetherington
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 : 9781572331686
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (316 download)
Book Synopsis The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910 by : Mark V. Wetherington
Download or read book The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910 written by Mark V. Wetherington and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination of cultural change challenges the conventional view of the Georgia Pine Belt as an unchanging economic backwater. Its postbellum economy evolves from self-sufficiency to being largely dependent upon cotton. Before the Civil War, the Piney Woods easily supported a population of mostly yeomen farmers and livestock herders. After the war, a variety of external forces, spearheaded by Reconstruction-era New South boosters, invaded the region, permanently altering the social, political, and economic landscape in an attempt to create a South with a diversified economy. The first stage in the transformation -- railroad construction and a revival of steamboating -- led to the second stage: sawmilling and turpentining. The harvest of forest products during the 1870s and 1880s created new economic opportunities but left the area dependent upon a single industry that brought deforestation and the decline of the open-range system within a generation.