Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1996

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

History

Major Professor

Paul H. Bergeron

Committee Members

Charles Aiken, James C. Cobb, John Muldowny, W. Bruce Wheeler

Abstract

“Yankees in Dixie" traces the development of Chattanooga, a southern industrial city, in the post-Civil War era. Historians have long debated the origins of the urban South. Many scholars have suggested that regional cities were built by a new generation of southern political and business leaders. Others contend that the South's antebellum elite was responsible for the region's post-war urban growth. None of these explanations, however, adequately explains the rise of modern Chattanooga which, although a southern city, was largely built and governed by northern immigrants. In the years following the Civil War, northerners, including many Union Army veterans, settled in Chattanooga and transformed the town into an important industrial center. In the process, they also altered the city's political character. At the close of Reconstruction, Chattanooga's northern industrialists overthrew the town's Radical government and, with the support of black voters, established a moderate Republican regime which dominated local government for the next twenty-five years. Chattanooga's Republican leaders maintained their hegemony throughout the 1870s and 1880s. As time progressed, however, their rule became increasingly difficult and by the 1880s the city's northern industrialists faced numerous challenges. Black voters, aware of their political importance, demanded a growing number of concessions from Republican city officials. At the same time. Republicans faced rising opposition from rival factions of the local Democratic party. Reform minded moderates, known as Mugwumps and Conservatives, called Bourbons, vied for control of the town's Democratic constituency. Together these groups presented a formidable, though discordant challenge to Republican rule. Things worsened for Chattanooga's northern industrialists in the 1890s. The city's economy, which had boomed during the 1880s, collapsed following of the panic of 1893. Local industries, faced with increased competition from Birmingham, also fared poorly. The town's leaders similarly saw their political fortunes wane. Democrats, aided by newly-passed Jim Crow laws, deposed the Republicans and installed a moderate Mugwump administration. Although these new leaders enacted much-needed improvements in Chattanooga's government, they did so at the expense of black voters; and municipal reform was achieved through the deliberate sacrifice of black suffrage.

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