La Grange After the Civil War

While Nathaniel W. Faison, a local entrepreneur and large landowner, was adding to his fortune by buying and selling land and cotton, the area around La Grange was suffering severely from the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The local economy entered a precipitous decline as cotton plantations suffered from the loss of slave labor. The price of land in Fayette County dropped from $6.15 per acre in 1860 to $4.50 in 1866. Consumer prices nationwide—for bread, pork, beef, butter, rice, salt, coffee, tea, coal, and cotton goods—were 90 percent higher than before the war, but wages did not keep up, advancing nearly 60 percent.

 

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