As Evans shows in his painstakingly researched work, Pratt quickly adapted to his new region. He entered Alabama's political arena in the 1840s as a forceful advocate of southern industrialization and economic diversification, employed slaves as well as southern and northern whites in his factories, supported the Confederacy, served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 1861 to 1863, and played an important role in Alabama public life until his death.
Based on a rich cache of personal and business records, Evans's study of Daniel Pratt and his "Yankee" town in the heart of the Deep South challenges the conventional portrayal of the South as a pre-modern region hostile to industrialization and shows that, contrary to current popular thought, the South was not so markedly different from the North.
