The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910

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.

• | Author: Mark V. Wetherington
• | Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• | Publication Date: February 23, 2020
• | Number of Pages: 392 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1572331682
• | ISBN-13: 9781572331686