Editor’s note: This is part of a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.
Greenville loves to tell the story of its reinventions, and it has reinvented itself many times. Textile town. New South city. Downtown comeback. I have told that story often.
But Greenville’s first great reinvention may have come earlier than we think, and it was not one the town chose. The Civil War did more than just interrupt Greenville’s progress. It unsettled the world people knew and forced the town to imagine what might come next…