The remaining Unionists in Atlanta, whose numbers have been estimated at about 100 families, faced increased pressures to conform or leave town. Railroad engineer Lemuel Grant, the chief engineer of the Confederate Department of Georgia, was responsible for fortifying the city. But when Georgia seceded in January 1861, Atlanta joined with the Confederacy and rapidly became a strategically important city for the Southern cause. In the presidential election of 1860, the majority of voters cast their ballots for Union candidates Stephen A. Gatherings of enslaved and free Blacks, for example, required special sanction by the mayor both groups had to observe strict curfews, and free persons of color could not live within the city limits without written permission of the city council.Īntebellum Atlanta was a city led by merchants and railroad men, not planters, and as sectional differences mounted, businessmen and voters in the city tended to oppose secession, often on economic grounds. The activities and freedoms of both groups of African Americans, however, were strictly controlled by laws and customs. Enslaved African Americans and free persons of color were part of this population, although in smaller numbers than in the older, larger port cities of the South. Civil Warīy 1860 Atlanta was home to 9,554 people and was already the fourth largest city in the state. Governor Lumpkin, on the other hand, is said to have maintained that the city’s new name was yet another tribute to his daughter, whose middle name was Atalanta, although this story appears to be apocryphal. Supposedly a feminine version of the word Atlantic, the name was first used by John Edgar Thomson, chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad, to designate his railroad’s local depot. Two years later the city adopted a new name-Atlanta. In 1843 the name of the town was changed to Marthasville, in honor of the daughter of former governor Wilson Lumpkin, who had played a key role in bringing the railroad to the area. Both of these actions sparked increased settlement and development in the upper Piedmont section of the state and led to Atlanta’s founding. Railroad TerminusĪtlanta owes its origins to two important developments in the 1830s: the forcible removal of Native Americans (principally Creeks and Cherokees) from northwest Georgia and the extension of railroad lines into the state’s interior. Issues of race and race relations, dating back to the years before the Civil War (1861-65), have affected the layout of the city and its political structure, municipal services, educational institutions, and sometimes conflicting images as a segregated southern city and a “Black mecca.” And the Atlanta spirit-part civic boosterism, part vision, with a healthy dose of business interests and priorities-has provided the city with an ever-changing set of goals and definitions of what Atlanta is and what it can become. Transportation innovations and their connections to Atlanta helped establish the city as a state and regional center of commerce and finance. The three dominant forces affecting Atlanta’s history and development have been transportation, race relations, and the “Atlanta spirit.” At each stage in the city’s development, these three elements have come into play. Atlanta Skyline Courtesy of Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Community Affairs.Ītlanta was founded in 1837, a century after Savannah, the state’s oldest city.
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