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Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction

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As the title suggests, Scott Reynolds monograph focuses on Southern railroad development from a political, social and economic perspective. Before the war states rights advocates prevented connecting tracks between the states for fear of losing control of established economic patterns. Rail development was also limited by the shortage of investment capital. To raise money states guaranteed stock by a system called "hypethecation" which made the stock marketable abroad. During the war connecting links were forged out of necessity, but wartime use and shortages left the system in a deplorable state. The author well describes this in the harrowing tale of CSA President Davis and his family evacuating Richmond in 1865. The struggle for control after the Civil War pits the conservative elements, i.e. the Klan, against the new economic opportunity of freedmen. The railroad feeds the violence between the two, sparked in Alamance, NC and Spartenburg, SC.

In Reconstruction control is usurped from A. B. Andrews' innovative southern business, the Seaboard Inland Air Line, by a northerner, Tom Scott. He invents the concept of the holding company which served the purpose of shielding those really in power with the result that investors now could confidently put money in securities and not fictional "hypethecated" investments. Money dried up for Southern investors leaving Northerners in control. But peace demanded accommodation. Cotton and tobacco filled rail cars perpetuating staple agricultural and Southern conservatives achieved redemption. On the other hand African Americans suffered a new humiliation in laboring under a convict labor system.

Nelson's scope is limited to the important route between Richmond and Atlanta. However it is in this key area that events lead him to his compelling argument that railroads in the south served to limit democratic authority, continued the South's reliance on agriculture, and perpetuated conservative authority.

The importance of through freight between the states, despite state imposed political impediments, is evident by the bill of lading. Andrews, in putting together the Seaboard Inland Air Line and using the bill of lading, provided rapid transit by multiple companies. An "air line" was more nebulous and less subject to state regulation and restrictions. Not only that, but a bill of lading was legal title to the freight. Knowledge of how to use this marketing power was found in New York wholesalers, not local merchants transferring control to the north.

Nelson's argument that railroads in the south served to limit democratic authority, continued the South's reliance on agriculture, and perpetuated conservative authority adds to other scholars interpretations of post bellum southern development.