Nixon attended events during the late nineteenth century that showed his commitment to the progressive modern movement and the ideals of the new southern middle class. Nixon, along with members of the new middle class on the local, state, and national level, promoted national reconciliation, the benefits of industrialization, and inculcation of commercial values. These men ensured the South that an insurgence of new business and industry would redeem their homeland by bringing economic and political power. They manifested their movement in the rituals of industrial and commercial exhibitions that promoted a new progressive economic vision of the New South. As Nixon brought his journals to a close in 1899, he wrote Memoriams published by the Lincoln Press Journal, family histories, a history of Lincoln County, and speeches that he delivered at family reunions, book club meetings, church dedications, and a very special dedication in 1909 of the Confederate Memorial Hall in Lincolnton. Nixon’s change in focus during this time corresponded with the appearance of industrial development in Lincolnton and Lincoln County. During the final decade of the nineteenth-century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, Lincolnton and Lincoln County experienced growth and development spurred by the ambition, lucrative investments, a renewed local interest in industrial and commercial ventures, and a vision of New South industrialism among men such as Nixon, Daniel Efird Rhyne, Robert S. Reinhardt, and others. These men were responsible for building textile mills, serving as stakeholders in banking and other entrepreneurial ventures, and constructing new buildings in downtown Lincolnton that were consistent with the prevailing national architectural trends. In 1909, for example, Robert S. Reinhardt built the most ornately detailed office building in Lincolnton in the Beaux Arts style. From 1887 to 1907, Daniel E. Rhyne built and operated more than six textile mills in Lincoln County, and held interests in other mills, mines, banks, and wagon companies in the Piedmont and Mountain regions of North Carolina.