Builders of a New South: Merchants, Capital, and the Remaking of Natchez, 1865–1914

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Description

Builders of a New South describes how, between 1865 and 1914, ten Natchez mercantile families emerged as leading purveyors within the wholesale plantation supply and cotton handling business, and soon became a dominant force within the social and economic Reconstruction of the Natchez District. They were ready to profit from postwar conditions in Natchez to gain mercantile prominence by supplying planters and black sharecroppers within the plantation supply and cotton buying business. They parlayed this initial success into cotton plantation ownership and became necessary local businessmen in Natchez, participating in many civic improvements and politics that shaped the district into the twentieth century.

This book digs deep in countless records (including census, tax, property, and probate, in addition to thousands of chattel mortgage contracts) to explore how these traders functioned as entrepreneurs within the aftermath of the Civil War, examining closely their role as furnishing merchants and land speculators, in addition to their relations with the area’s planters and freed black population. Their use of favorable laws protecting them as creditors, at the side of a solid community base that was once civic-minded and culturally intact, greatly assisted them in their success. These families prospered partly on account of their good business practices, and partly because local whites and blacks embraced them as useful agents within the emerging new marketplace. The situation created by the aftermath of the war and emancipation provided a great circumstance for the merchant families, and finally, they played a key role within the district’s economic survival and were the prime modernizers of Natchez.

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