The consequences of mill dams in the Piedmont region were not only environmental, but extended to the social, economic, and political realms, as well.
As an example, Harry Watson’s “The Common Rights of Mankind: Subsistence, Shad, and Commerce in the Early Republican South” describes a particular debate in the summer of 1787 involving a recently constructed dam in Orangeburg District, South Carolina. Ferguson’s Mills used the dam to power saws that cut logs to sell to local consumers, and to grind cornmeal and wheat flour for local families and to export to other areas for profit. While the outputs of Ferguson’s Mills supported a thriving local economy, some locals protested the existence of the dam, saying that it prevented the operation of a fishery, which would contribute a source of food and economic growth to the local community. This protest was not an isolated incident; legislatures in the Southern Atlantic region of the United States experienced hundreds of protests regarding mill dams between 1750 and 1850. Mill dams quickly became a political issue, brought forward to different legislative bodies in the South by farmers with the same general complaints.
The increasing popularity of mill dams marked a transition in the Southern economy; formerly based on individual pioneer subsistence, the mill dams introduced an economic structure based more around slave labor and a collective market. The division between people who supported a mill dam economy and those who rejected it solidified identities of individualistic republican/antebellum farmers that are often attributed to the South.
Mill dams transformed the social landscape of the south by creating this division; many less affluent white landowners felt threatened by the community-driven nature of a market economy and preferred the security of self-sufficiency outside of growing slave plantations and mills. Others felt that the progress was necessary and was generating positive change, resulting in more complex structures of social organization and economic development.
An important dynamic highlighted by this conflict was that of small farmers and plantation/mill owners. Those who kept slaves to do labor in mills and on plantations were obviously in support of the continued construction of mills along Piedmont waterways, as it provided a source of major profit and did little to negatively impact their lives. For smaller farmers, however, it forced a shift in diet and in way of life in general. Without access to the fish in the waterways, families lost a major food source. In addition, there was little room to continue to live outside of the market once it was established; as the rich amassed more money and resources, they gained complete political and social control, as well.
Watson notes that the protests against mills were not restricted to the Southern US, and that similar arguments persisted in areas like New England, which relied heavily on coastal resources and a fishing economy. Individuals in the North protested the construction of textile mills, iron forges, and other industry structures that required access to (and damming of) important waterways. Articulate protests against the system faced much more success in the North than they did in the South, although they weren’t completely successful. In addition, the North was not nearly as involved as the South in the slave trade and use of slave labor in agriculture. This meant that, while Northern farmers and fishermen were disappointed to lose their former way of life, it was relatively easy to find employment in the new industries.
As for the Southerners, the widespread interest in maintaining an agricultural economy based on slave labor meant that there was little incentive to provide employment to the agriculturalists who lost land and resources to the wealthy. Watson asserts that, because petitions against mill construction were narrow and refused to confront the deeper issues of “racial privilege and cultural hegemony” that kept the institution of slavery in place in the South, the protest efforts went largely unrecognized by the politically affluent. In short, many Southerners were more interested in maintaining racial hierarchy than overturning it, even at their own detriment.
In addition to the implementation of a more rigid social hierarchy, mill dam economies had other social consequences in the Piedmont. While farmers enjoyed the freedom and self-sufficiency of individual agriculture and were relatively independent, strong community bonds were generated by close trade with minimal outside interaction, inter-marriage between local families, and communal activities like politics, religion, and labor. These bonds were, ironically, largely lost as the economy transitioned to a collective and less individualized market.
It is clear that the impacts of mill dams in the South extended far beyond the physical environment. They played off of existing social, political, and economic dynamics in the region and shaped the identities of both the wealthy and the less affluent. The mill dam economy gave political power, economic control, and social status to those who were willing to buy into it, and withheld these benefits from those who didn’t participate. Mill dams, while spread throughout the Eastern United States, had markedly different effects in the Northern and Southern regions and highlighted fundamental differences between their values and lifestyles.
Works Cited
Watson, Harry. 1996. “‘The Common Rights of Mankind’: Subsistence, Shad, and Commerce in the Early Republican South.” The Journal of American History Vol. 83 (No. 1): 13–43.