Description
After the Civil War, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, forged adifferent path than most southern urban centers. Long a portal to theDeep South, Chattanooga was largely rebuilt by northern men, usingnorthern capital, and imbued with northern industrial values. As such,the city served as a cultural and economic nexus between North andSouth, and its northern elite stood out distinctively from the rest ofthe region’s booster class. In Chattanooga, 1865–1900, TimEzzell explores Chattanooga’s political and economic development fromthe close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century,revealing how this unique business class adapted, prospered, andgoverned in the postwar South. After reviewing Chattanooga’s wartime experience, Ezzell chroniclespolitical and economic developments in the city over the next twogenerations. White Republicans, who dominated municipal governmentthanks to the support of Chattanooga’s large African Americanpopulation, clashed repeatedly with Democrats, who worked to “redeem”the city from Republican rule and restore “responsible,” “efficient”government. Ezzell shows that, despite the efforts by white Democrats toundermine black influence, black Chattanoogans continued to wieldconsiderable political leverage into the 1890s. On the economic front, an extensive influx of northernentrepreneurs and northern capital into postwar Chattanooga led todynamic if unstable growth. Ezzell details the city’s efforts to competewith Birmingham as the center of southern iron and steel production. At times, this vision was within reach, but these hopes faded by the1890s, and Chattanooga grew into something altogether different: notnorthern, not southern, but something peculiar “set down in Dixie.” Although Chattanooga never reached its Yankee boosters’ ideal of “anorthern industrial city at home in the southern hills,” Ezzelldemonstrates that it forged a legacy of resilience and resourcefulnessthat continues to serve the community to the present day.
