Atlanta - Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow. John R. Hornady

      CHAPTER I. Laying the Foundations

      IT seems more than passing strange that Atlanta, where the Sherman war machine attained the maximum in destructive force, should have become the most dynamic power in the rehabilitation of the South; that a city which was fed to the flames in times of internecine conflict, should have become as a shining light, leading an exhausted and impoverished people into peaceful conquests out of which came wealth and happiness undreamed.

      Sherman, when he had driven back the ragged and exhausted forces which fought for the defense of Atlanta, found here something that was impervious to shot and shell and flaming torch — a spiritual something that lived and loved and hoped and wrought when ashes filled the nostrils and scorched the feet and no green thing seemed to hold out hope of a brighter and happier day. Strange, too, that the very thing which caused the war clouds to burst upon Atlanta with the utmost fury, should have proved the mainspring of her rehabilitation. Yet it is so. This flaming spirit of faith, this inextinguishable hope, this unalterable purpose to achieve, made Atlanta a center from which radiated the impulses that kept ill-equipped and exhausted forces fighting on and on as long as one ray of hope remained. And because it was such a center, it was marked for the maximum of punishment. That which furnished so much of hope and of material assistance must be destroyed utterly. So Atlanta was reduced to ashes. But a vain thing it was, for that which it was sought to destroy was indestructible, then as now. The Atlanta Spirit survived, and the influence that had wrought so much in promoting the cause of the Confederacy, became a mighty factor in the amazing restoration which was to follow.

      The world likes to see the ideals and purposes of a people epitomized in an individual, and Atlanta has been fortunate in that it possessed a son through whom the guiding impulses of its heart — and the heart of the South, for that matter — were so visualized that the whole nation understood. Henry Grady vocalized and visualized these impulses with a clarity and a beauty that thrilled hearts that had been unfeeling and caused the scales to drop from the eyes of those who had been unseeing. Close enough to the Old South to feel all the sweetness and tenderness of its softer moments, and to know all the sternness and gallantry that characterized its conflicts, and close enough to the New South to sense every impulse by which it was stirred; having the gift of prophecy and the tongue of golden speech, Grady revealed Atlanta and the South as he revealed himself — devoid of