Lowell of the South - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 12

the river's rapids. The boats were sixty to eighty feet long and seven feet wide with a shal-
low draft to clear the shallow and rocky river bottom when burdened with up to sixty bales
of cotton. The pilot, with an additional crew of six men, drove the boat from the stern with
a long trailing oar. The deckhands deployed poles to keep the boat from crashing on the
rocks, and their bodies were often left bruised, battered, and exhausted from fighting the
river. 40 South Carolina slaves “familiar with all the shoals and other obstructions” on the
river piloted some of these boats, often traveling unaccompanied over seventy-five miles
between Andersonville (S.C.) and Augusta to deliver cotton. 41 Augusta city records from
1817 also suggest that before the advent of steam power, Augusta's riverborne trade with
Savannah was “fueled by the energy” of predominantly free African American river men.
Of the 176 free blacks required to register with the city, “boating and carpentry” were the
most common occupations among men. 42 These men fought and negotiated the river's cur-
rents, and many drowned as a result. 43 Cumming's Augusta Canal provided limited up-
stream navigational improvements and eliminated some of these dangerous experiences for
black and white Petersburg boatmen. The Augusta Canal would certainly help Cumming
reach one goal: better transportation options.
A second goal was closely aligned with the Lowell system's ability to turn river water
into energy for new industrial applications. Despite boosters' calls for increased industrial
diversification before the American Civil War, Augusta remained utterly dependent on ag-
ricultural production of tobacco and cotton in the city's hinterland, as illustrated by mer-
chants' $700,000 export of these products to Savannah in 1817. But by 1853, the canal's
managers were also selling canal water to five customers: the Augusta Manufacturing
Company's two textile mills, the Granite Mill's flour mills and sawmills, the Cunningham
Flour Mill, the Augusta Machine Works, and the T. J. Cheely Grain & Cotton Gin. 44 Cum-
ming's canal vision succeeded in bringing industry to Augusta on a scale much smaller than
that of the real Lowell in Massachusetts. But like the Merrimack River valley—complete
with dozens of dams and power canals, as well as dozens of mills and thousands of op-
eratives—the Savannah River's water became an instrument for industrialists while other
river users found themselves at a disadvantage. For example, anglers throughout the basin
understood that the Augusta Canal dam contributed to the loss of a once-vibrant shad fish-
ery. 45 Once the water entered the canal, the water belonged to the city of Augusta; the wa-
terpower generated from the canal was “owned entirely by the city” and was “leased to the
different mills.” 46 These antebellum industrial dreams produced a hydraulic system cap-
able of serving an industrial factory system and war machine.
The survival of the Confederate States of America depended on the Savannah River
and the Augusta Canal. Augusta had many desirable natural advantages at the outbreak
of American Civil War. The city's environment made Augusta and other southern fall-
line cities like Richmond and Columbus critical Civil War towns. The Confederacy tapped