RICHARD PETERS: CHAMPION OF THE NEW SOUTH - Hardcover

Shingleton, Royce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865541264 ISBN 13: 9780865541269

Publisher: Mercer Univ Pr, 1985

Synopsis

Given the extent of Peters' activities, the Contents of the book provides the most comprehensive summary (for a more traditional summary, click See all Editorial Reviews below and look for From the Inside Flap).

CONTENTS

Preface
Acknowledgments
  1 Sunrise:  Pennsylvania Heritage 
  2 Georgia Yankee:  Railroad, Peters Launch Atlanta
  3 Adopted Son:  Proprietor, Booster, Agrarian 
  4 Antebellum Years:  Man of Vision, City Promoter
  5 Devon Hall:  Agriculture's Golden Age--1850s
  6 War Clouds on the Horizon:  Secession Crisis
  7 Strategic Atlanta:  Peters Serves the Confederacy
  8 Georgia at War:  Blockade Running, Siege of Atlanta
  9 Burning of Atlanta:  Peters Returns to Atlanta as Refugee
10 Resurging Atlanta:  Local Government Leader, Conciliator
11 Atlanta Named Capital:  Peters Makes It Happen
12 Street Railroads:  Peters Builds Transit System
13 Kimball House:  Hotel Promoter, Railroad Lessee
14 Peter's Stock Farm:  Scientific Stockman in Postbellum  Era
15 "World's Fair":  Cotton Exposition, Industry Advocate
16 Sunset:  His Final Years
Epilogue
Bibliographic Note
Index

About this title

From the Author

This book took many years to complete, partly because it was delayed by first writing the Wood book, which was an offshoot from the Peters manuscript.  Also, the depositories containing material on Peters were scattered (the Atlanta History Center was the most important depository).  Then too, it was almost as if Peters had a dual personality--one as city booster, and the other as scientific agriculturists, which created a problem of organizing the material in some coherent way. 

The late Franklin Garrett, iconic Atlanta historian and official of the Atlanta History Center, read the manuscript.  I had come to know him during my research there, and he once addressed a class of mine at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.  Franklin said that he would give the manuscript a "good sendoff" to a local bank that administered the Atlanta Foundation, which approved a grant in partial subvention of the cost of publication, and he also suggested that I offer the manuscript to Mercer University Press.

Sheffield Hale, another towering figure in Atlanta (and Georgia) historical circles, wrote in an online magazine "Like the Dew" an article in 2011 titled "Atlanta's Rhett Butler."  In it he set forth Peters as a candidate for the real life Butler in "Gone With the Wind."  He wrote:  "This theory must compete with the argument also presented ...by shipwreck salvager, E. Lee Spence, who announced in 1989 and published in his 1995 book that the historical basis of Rhett Butler was George Alfred Trenholm of the Charleston firm of Fraser, Trenholm & Co.  Richard Peters biography--his attitude toward the war, his involvement in establishing a blockade running enterprise out of Atlanta and post war attitudes toward the occupying forces...is founded in fact and reflects well upon Margaret Mitchell's research and the appropriate historical context from which she drew her characters....[She] would probably have been aware of both Peters and Trenholm given her extensive period research....All I am suggesting is that for a historical precedent she didn't need to go to Charleston to find Atlanta's Rhett Butler."

From the Inside Flap

The front flap contains mention of Peter's activities, and is continued on the back flap.  Here is a somewhat contracted version of both flaps.

"Before there was a New South there was Richard Peters.  Indeed the New South begins with the arrival of Richard Peters in the rough-hewn crossroads village of Marthasville, Georgia, on 15 September 1835....within a few days of his official arrival to establish headquarters for his line's railroad and stagecoach operations, he changed its name....For a generation he directed the development of Atlanta and--as Royce Shingleton explains in this lively and meticulously documented biography--'set the city on the path to greatness'.  Yet in his own time Peters was best known as an exponent of scientific agriculture.  He did not plant cotton, but conducted extensive experiments with grains and grasses.  He imported the best breeds of livestock then available, seeking strains that would survive the climate and diseases of the South while increasing production of meat, milk, and wool.  The animals he bred were shipped to farms and ranches all over the United States--Brigham Young ordered some Angora goats to improve his Utah herds--and his peach trees started orchards in California and New Zealand....R. Peters, the [journal] Southern Cultivator proclaimed in 1856, is doing more for the South than any man in it....When Civil War came, he elected to remain in his adopted city, despite his Yankee origins.  He served the Confederacy as its civilian transportation agent, developed a fleet to run the Union naval blockade, and then, at war's end, worked for conciliation with the Federal forces.  His influence considerably cushioned the impact of Reconstruction in Atlanta.  Peters planned and successfully maneuvered the transfer of the state capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta after the war, and he [provided] the land on which the capitol building sits....This biography sheds new light on an extraordinary individual whose contributions continue to enrich the South and the nation."

Edition details

• Publisher: Mercer Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0865541264
• ISBN 13: 9780865541269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276