Textile Kings
The last half of the nineteenth century brought enormous political and
economic change to Greenville. Immediately
following the war, United States President Andrew Johnson named
Greenvillian Benjamin Perry, an anti-secessionist, as
provisional governor of South Carolina. During Reconstruction, patterns in
Greenville County did not mirror others in the
region. The Union occupation forces were treated kindly. Furthermore, the
Ku Klux Klan did not gain a foothold as it did in
other areas of the state. With the expansion of the railroads in the early
1870s and the increase in the use of chemical fertilizer, cotton production
in Greenville increased six-fold from 1860. However, when cotton prices
fell in the 1880s, disgruntled Greenville farmers join their counterparts
elsewhere in the state in supporting agrarian radical Pitchfork Ben
Tillman, who was elected governor in 1890. Tillman assured white political
hegemony in South Carolina and gave South Carolina its Jim Crow system of
racial segregation.This period also ushered in the first large-scale,
modern textile factories in the area. Vardry McBee, Jr., with his
Camperdown Mill, and Henry P. Hammett, with Batesville Mill, were pioneers
in the industry. Between 1894 and the First World War, Greenville, along
the Reedy River, boomed along with the textile industry. However, the
social effects of this move to textiles were startling. The number and size
of factories expanded and migrants flooded into the county for work. Mill
workers were treated as inferior by the townspeople. Seeking a measure of
autonomy in politics which eluded them in the work-place, these alienated
mill workers turned to political demagogue Coleman Blease, electing him
governor in 1910.
This era also established Greenville's role as a military center. In the
late 1890s, although no Greenville regiments served in the Spanish American
War, Camp Wetherill opened to train troops from the surrounding states for
wartime duty. In the next war, World War I, Greenville sent one regiment to
the front and established another camp, Camp Sevier. Following the war
Greenville, solidly Democratic, ardently supported President Woodrow Wilson
and the Treaty of Versailles while the United States Senate debated its
merits. The post-war decade of the 1920s would witness the first serious
reversals of textile prosperity in the area.
1865
- Benjamin Perry was named provisional governor by United States President Andrew Johnson.
1866
- Brevet Captain Thomas Britton, United States Army, brought in a company of troops to occupy Greenville District.
- The Freedman's Bureau came to Greenville under Brevet Lieutenant A.E. Niles. Later that year Niles was replaced by Brevet Major J.W. DeForest, who recorded his thoughts in Greenville and the region in A Union Officer in Greenville.
1868
- The Reconstruction Constitution abolished Greenville District in favor of Greenville County.
1869
- The South Carolina Legislature incorporated Greenville as a city.
1871
- The Springfield Baptist Church, with primarily a black congregation, opened on McBree Avenue.
1873
- The Southern Air Line Railroad from New Orleans to New York City stopped in Greenville, leading to the formation the towns of Greer, Fountain Inn, Simpsonville, and Mauldin.
- The Piedmont Manufacturing Company, the first large textile company, was organized under Henry Hammett.
- Greenville's first daily newspaper, the Daily News, was first published.
1877
- Electoral fraud in the election of 1876 lead to a deal being struck in South Carolina - Rutherford Hayes would win the White House and Wade Hampton III would win
the governorship of the state. More importantly, however, federal troops left South Carolina, ending Reconstruction.
1878
- Mattoon Presbyterian Church, a place of worship for blacks, was organized.
1882
- On 16 May, a Southern Bell switchboard opened at the corner of Laurens and West Washington Streets - the first telephone service in Greenville.
1885
- T.C. Gower advocated an improved public educational system for which the City School District of Greenville was created.
1888
- The first electric lights illuminated Greenville streets from a powerhouse on Broad Street.
1890
- Edgefield native Benjamin Tillman won the governorship.
1891
- A.J. Stinson founded Israel Metropolitan Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.
1895
- Governor Tillman passed a new constitution that established legalized segregation.
1898
- Camp Wetherill was created in Greenville to train soldiers for service in the Spanish-American War.
The First Brigade was located near the present intersection of Wade Hampton Boulevard and
Earle Street. The Second Brigade was headquartered at the present-day site of Greenville
General Hospital.
1899
1907
- Joe Jackson, a baseball player for one of the local textile mills, was signed by the Greenville Spinners. By the end of the season,
Connie Mack, owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, gave Shoeless Joe a major league contract.
1910
- Coleman L. Blease, the fiery politician, hailed as the friend of
mill workers, was elected governor of South Carolina and served two
consecutive terms.
1912
- The first hospital in Greenville opened on 10 January at the site of the old Arlington Avenue sanitarium. The private sanitarium was a financial failure and the Hospital Association and the Women's Hospital Board purchased it.
1915
- The Southern Textile Exposition was held at the new Textile Hall on West Washington Street, garnishing national attention to the city.
1917
- Camp Sevier was opened on Paris Mountain to train troops from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee for World War I.
Source:
Huff, Archie Vernon, Jr. Greenville: The History of the City and County in the South Carolina Piedmont. University of South Carolina Press (Columbia), 1995.
© Center for the Study of Piedmont History, Furman University