in ruins

Whatever the motivation, the action left the Charlottesville Factory in ruins. Attempts of local businessmen to manufacture successfully a low grade of cotton and woolen cloth for home consumption seemed dead as the Confederacy. But the impulse to renew the struggle still existed. Like the South, whose textile industry it typified in the ante-bellum era, the Charlottesville Factory would slowly rise again and reach new heights in the years ahead. The story of that development and the influences behind it lie in the next chapter.
--Harry Poindexter