Centered near Charleston and Beaufort, the river and land mining industries dominated world production during the 1870s and 1880s. Phosphate mining fueled the rapid growth of local fertilizer companies, eventually causing the fertilizer industry to shift from the Northeast to an industrializing Charleston. The lowcountry aristocracy (planters, cotton factors, shipping merchants, gentlemen-scientists, and lawyers) created the new phosphate and fertilizer industries to reverse their losses from emancipation. Mining for their former masters, freedpeople extracted housing and labor concessions whi ... More

Centered near Charleston and Beaufort, the river and land mining industries dominated world production during the 1870s and 1880s. Phosphate mining fueled the rapid growth of local fertilizer companies, eventually causing the fertilizer industry to shift from the Northeast to an industrializing Charleston. The lowcountry aristocracy (planters, cotton factors, shipping merchants, gentlemen-scientists, and lawyers) created the new phosphate and fertilizer industries to reverse their losses from emancipation. Mining for their former masters, freedpeople extracted housing and labor concessions while creating an autonomous alternative to sharecropping.With access to abundant and cheaper fertilizer, previously skeptical southern farmers extended the reach of “King Cotton” throughout the South. The convergence of the two industries ignited a limited industrialization in the low country and had a long-term impact on America and the South.