Nature and the Nation: Hydropower, Political Economy, and the Post-World War II U.S. South

In the decade following World War II, public and private power interests struggled over the electric energy generated at the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Clarks Hill dam that straddled the Georgia-South Carolina border on the Savannah River. Though private utilities and the Corps originally clashed over the construction of the dam, the enduring and central issue in the fight concerned whether the power companies or the Department of the Interior (DOI) would control the transmission of Clarks Hill’s electricity to rural electric cooperatives. For both sides, the identity of this power would inform the identity of a still heavily agricultural but swiftly industrializing region. In the context of the emerging Cold War—and because Clarks Hill became a national test-case for DOI power-transmission policy—this issue also had nationwide implications regarding public power (including the future of the Tennessee Valley Authority), natural resource policy, and models for economic growth. If the government constructed its own power lines, private utilities argued, heavy-handed control over southern land- and waterscapes would soon follow. As such the South would depart from American reverence for free enterprise, leading the way to a socialized grid and nation. In contrast, public-power advocates claimed that the water’s energy was a God-given tool to be enjoyed equitably by all. If utilities gained control over Clarks Hill’s electricity, it would lose its identity as a publically-owned resource and serve only to enrich a few. In this case Dixie would slip back into its impoverished, pre-modern state and would be unable to join the nation in its postwar quest for economic prosperity and social progress. This paper explores these issues and discusses the ways that the transformation of and control over nature and energy had repercussions for state power and national identity in the postwar United States.