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A Changing Wind
Commerce and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta
By Wendy Hamand Venet Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Wendy Hamand Venet
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-19216-2
CHAPTER 1
Gate City to the South
Nothing in Atlanta's early history suggested that it would amount to much. Founded in the late 1830s as the terminus for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, Atlanta showed so little promise as an urban center that one railroad engineer predicted that it would make "a good location for one tavern, a blacksmith-shop, a grocery-store, and nothing else." During its early years, this prediction appeared prophetic. In 1845, Atlanta contained only twelve to fourteen families and three general stores. However, the town grew in fits and starts during the late 1840s as the Georgia Railroad and the Macon and Western added connecting lines. The Atlanta and West Point added a fourth railroad to Atlanta the following decade. By the time the Civil War began in 1861, Atlanta had begun to call itself Gate City to the South, and its rail lines connected Atlanta eastward to Augusta, southward to Savannah and the coast, westward to Montgomery, Alabama, and northward to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Railroads put Atlanta on the map and railroads kept it there.
Economic growth spurred by the railroads led to commercial growth. In 1846, two hotels opened near the railroad tracks: Washington Hall and the Atlanta Hotel. The latter, constructed and owned by the Georgia Railroad, was two stories tall and the city's first brick structure. Atlanta's first bank was opened in 1847 by an agent of the Georgia Railroad, and a second was opened the following year by financiers based in Macon, Georgia. A newspaper editor named Cornelius Hanleiter moved his Southern Miscellany from Madison, Georgia, to Atlanta in 1847. Billing itself as a "weekly family newspaper," the Miscellany supported the Whig political party in national affairs, endorsing its leader, Henry Clay, and the party's platform of business development. The Miscellany carried advertisements for retail establishments including a dry goods store, a butcher, and a bookseller. In 1849, the Macon and Western Branch Telegraph Company offered Atlantans telegraphic connection to other cities, and Hanleiter was the city's first telegraph operator. By the end of the decade, Atlanta had a population of just over two thousand people.
During the 1850s, Atlanta's population grew dramatically, and so did the number of area businesses, most of them located on Alabama and Decatur Streets, which ran parallel to the tracks of the Macon and Western Railroad, or on Whitehall Street, which bisected the tracks to the southwest, while the more residential Peachtree Street ran to the north. A newspaper called the Weekly Intelligencer acted as a booster for local development. Growing ad revenue and circulation rewarded its efforts. By 1860, the Intelligencer issued daily as well as weekly editions and its circulation expanded from seven hundred to three thousand. Religious, cultural, and educational institutions also flourished during this decade. Starting in the late 1840s, the Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Catholic denominations constructed houses of worship, usually frame buildings of modest size that satisfied the immediate needs of their small congregations but would quickly prove inadequate to the population of the growing city. A variety of private schools catered to the interests of Atlanta's more affluent residents, although efforts to reach a wider audience through proposals for tax-supported "free schools" stalled.
Railroads, industry, and commerce drove Atlanta's economy in the 1850s. The four railroads were major employers, and Atlanta's industrialists profited from contracts with them. Some railroads ran their own machine shops, but privately run foundries also employed a significant number of men. The Atlanta Rolling Mill of William Markham and Lewis Scofield employed 150 men and made eighteen thousand tons of iron rails annually. Next to Richmond's Tredegar Iron Works, the factory of Markham and Scofield had the largest capacity of any iron-producing factory in the South. Joseph and Isaac Winship opened the Winship Iron Works in Atlanta and the Bartow Iron Works in Cartersville. Initially they built railroad cars, but later they began manufacturing boilers, engines, and iron railings. Atlanta's manufacturing interests also included the Peters Flour Mill owned by Richard Peters and a variety of small manufacturing operations that produced buggies and wagons, harnesses, tinware, furniture, candy, copper stills, hats, barrels, cotton gins, cigars, brooms, whiskey, and beer.
By the 1850s, more than one in five Atlantans held commercial jobs, and seventy-seven stores in Atlanta sold dry goods, clothing, shoes and boots, and furniture, with most of the products imported from manufacturing establishments in the North. The firm of Bartley M. Smith and William E. Ezzard ran advertisements in the newspapers claiming it could sell consumers anything from "window-glass to dental and surgical instruments." Some of the merchants who made money from commercial ventures began to build warehouses along Whitehall and Alabama Streets, with rental space in these structures adding to their profit margins. Because most Atlanta merchants sold goods on a "cash only" basis, avoiding credit-based sales, the city's businessmen avoided bankruptcy during the national depression of 1857.
The wagon trade also powered Atlanta's economy. Twice every week, wagons pulled by mules or oxen filled the city streets carrying wheat, fruits and vegetables, meat, and eggs for sale at Atlanta's public market. Farmers also sold modest amounts of cotton, though the fluffy fiber was not a major crop in the piedmont surrounding Atlanta. Open from before sunrise to 7:00 P.M., the market was an economic and social gathering place. The city charged a tax on farmers who sold their goods there, a major source of revenue for the city. Lucy Hull Baldwin grew up in Atlanta in a house on Peachtree Street, and many years later she recalled seeing the biweekly procession of wagons pass her home headed for the market. Lucy and other children stood near their gates to watch their mothers purchase meat and produce from women in shabby calico dresses and sunbonnets.
By the mid-1850s, Atlanta's population was 80 percent white and 20 percent enslaved African American, a relatively low percentage of African Americans when compared with other Georgia cities. Savannah's prewar population of twenty-two thousand was 36 percent black. Of Augusta's twelve thousand citizens, 33 percent were African Americans. Columbus's population was slightly higher than Atlanta's at ninety-six hundred but was 37 percent black. These Georgia cities had a large interest in plantation agriculture and a correspondingly higher stake in slavery. Atlanta's smaller dependence on slavery can be attributed to its business-based economy and a population that included entrepreneurs, mechanics, and merchants. In 1850, Atlanta had 139 slaveholders, most of them owning small numbers of slaves. Only two Atlantans owned twenty or more slaves, the number that federal census enumerators used to define a "planter." In this case, both men owned hotels, not farms. Ten years later, Atlanta's slave-owning residents had grown to 373, with 44 of these men owning twenty or more slaves. Atlanta bonds-people worked for railroads, hotels, factories, and private homes.
Like other urban slaves, Atlanta's African Americans had many opportunities to elude their masters' direct supervision. They attended church, ran errands, visited friends. Typically, cities subjected urban slaves to a curfew of 9:00 P.M., and Atlanta was no exception. The ringing of bells signified the nightly curfew, but enterprising slaves sometimes found opportunities to dodge this restriction. Patrick Calhoun, son of Atlanta's future mayor and a boy during the 1850s, recalled many years later that he forged his father's name on passes for "lovesick negroes" so they could visit their girlfriends and evade the city's curfew. Occasionally he wrote love letters on their behalf.
In some extraordinary cases, Atlanta slaves lived in quasi-freedom. The slaves of Ephraim and Ellen Ponder provide the notable example. A wealthy investor and slave trader, Ephraim retired to Atlanta in the 1850s, bringing with him his wife, Ellen, and sixty-five bonds-people. He owned twenty-five acres on Marietta Road, on which he built a fine mansion and gardens, along with outbuildings used as housing and working places for the slaves, many of whom were mechanics.
With the exception of members of their immediate household staff, the rest of the Ponder bonds-people "were permitted to hire their own time," according to Henry Flipper, a child owned by the Ponders who would later achieve renown as the first black graduate of West Point. Hiring out was a common practice in the South, for even though it was unlawful, it was socially tolerated. Evidently the Ponder slaves kept at least some of the money they made, with permission, for Flipper wrote that these bonds-people were "virtually free" and "acquired and accumulated wealth." However, self-hired slaves were still slaves, whose lives depended on the circumstances of their owners, as the Ponder slaves soon learned. In 1861, Ephraim Ponder filed for divorce, citing his wife's infidelities dating back to 1854. He moved to Thomasville, while Ellen remained in their Atlanta home on Marietta Road, engaging in what Henry Flipper called "illegitimate pleasures." With a legal guardian now in charge of the slaves, they continued to work outside the Ponder home, although Ellen evidently collected their wages.
Most Atlanta slaves did not enjoy privileges given to the Ponder bonds-people. Instead, like the vast majority of slaves in the antebellum South, legally they were chattel and treated as such. The 1859 city directory lists three slave dealers: William K. Bagby, Henry C. Holcomb, and the firm of William W. Watkins and Z. A. Rice. Many consignment merchants also sold slaves, along with other products. S. J. Shackleford opened an office contiguous to the railroad tracks, advertising frequently in the Daily Intelligencer that "he is prepared to receive Consignments of all kinds of MERCHANDISE and PRODUCE.... He will also give strict attention to the sale of NEGROES, REAL ESTATE, HORSES &c." by auction or on commission.
The city of Atlanta placed restrictions on what slaves could do and when they could do it, and slave-owners were expected to control their bonds-people. The City Council fined owners who allowed their slaves to live outside of their households. Moreover, slaves found with alcohol or caught swearing or being "impudent" to white people faced arrest, jail, and whipping of up to thirty-nine lashes, their court expenses charged to their owners. Fear of slave uprising led whites to suspect the intentions of every action slaves took. In September 1854, two slaves identified only as Ned and Nathan applied to the Atlanta City Council for permission to "form themselves into a moral society" along with other bonds-people. After deliberating the matter, the Council granted their request with the understanding that a city marshal must attend every meeting. In making this ruling, the Council illustrated white people's fear that any gathering of slaves could be a front for incendiary activities.
Slaves who tried to test the limits of servitude often encountered resistance even if their owners were sympathetic. Roderick D. Badger practiced dentistry with the permission of his father, a white man named Joshua Badger, who was also his owner. Joshua Badger, a farmer and also a dentist in rural DeKalb County, taught dentistry skills to Roderick, then allowed him to establish his own practice in Atlanta. Badger's skills and success angered white dentists, who protested to the City Council in 1859. The Council chose to ignore the protests, and Badger is listed as a dentist in Atlanta's first city directory, which was published that year.
Atlanta's free black community officially consisted of only seven people in the mid-i85os (though others may not have been counted), and white people viewed them with suspicion. A city ordinance required each to have a white sponsor. Another ordinance passed in 1859 required each free African American to pay $1,000 for the privilege of living in the city, though it is unclear whether the city made efforts to enforce this ordinance. Free blacks had to request permission even to entertain visitors. On September 1, 1854, a free woman named Laura Kelly applied for permission to allow her mother and niece to travel from Augusta and to remain with her for five to six weeks.
Evidently, the Council found Kelly's story acceptable, for it deliberated and approved her request at its next meeting. However, in 1856, the City Council sent a petition from an African American seeking to "vend ice cream" on to the ordinance committee, where no further action appears to have been taken.
In spite of its economic dynamism, 1850s Atlanta was still rough around the edges, especially when compared with the older, more established southern cities. Atlanta lacked a riverfront since the Chattahoochee was six miles to the north. Because it began as a railroad terminus instead of a planned community, Atlanta lacked a coherent set of streets, and the hilly landscape further complicated matters. Sarah Massey moved to Atlanta as a young matron in the 1850s and lived in a house on Washington Street. Many years later she recalled the lack of paved and graded streets in the Gate City: "We had to walk up hill and down hill and through the mud or stay at home." In wintertime, Atlanta's unpaved streets were so muddy that they remained impassable to carriages for weeks at a time. In addition to its issues with streets, the city did not address problems involving sanitation, including garbage dumped everywhere, stray hogs on the loose, and a water supply that was inadequate to Atlanta's needs.
The city also had troubles with poverty and crime. Many of Atlanta's poorest citizens lived in a shantytown at Decatur and Pratt Streets called Slabtown because the flimsy houses were constructed of the excess wood donated by a local citizen who owned a sawmill. Lawlessness characterized sections of the city, including the area known as Murrel's Row, a stretch of Decatur Street bordered by Pryor and Peachtree Streets. Blood sports, especially cockfighting, drew large crowds, and drunken melees were common. Prostitution also flourished. Another area, even more notorious, was Snake Nation, located south of the city center.
Fed up with disorder, businessmen began to exercise increasing control over social, economic, and political matters in their city. In 1851, a group of entrepreneurs, embarrassed by the town's rougher element and the eyesore that was Decatur Street, raided Snake Nation and dispersed the gamblers and lawbreakers. They tore down the shanties and warned rowdies not to return. These measures did not end lawlessness altogether. Groups of young boys continued to wander on city streets since there were no public schools to keep them occupied. In taverns, including the famous Alhambra drinking saloon on Whitehall Street, workingmen imbibed, sometimes to excess. But progress was being made. In 1854, the City Council passed measures to improve governance by dividing the city into wards. The following year, gas lighting came to Atlanta when the city constructed a gas plant at a cost of $50,000 and ordered fifty streetlamps to illuminate the town. The city contracted to have Whitehall Street paved from Marietta Street to Mitchell.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Changing Wind by Wendy Hamand Venet. Copyright © 2014 Wendy Hamand Venet. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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