Atlanta: Just an "Eating House"
There is an old story that when, many years after the war, General Sherman returned to Atlanta, a young
reporter asked him why he burned the city As Ralph McGill told it in a 1969 National Geographic article, the
old general took the boy's hand and opened it. Pointing to his palm he said, "when I got to Atlanta, what
was left of the Confederacy could roughly be compared to your hand. Atlanta was the palm, and by destroying
it I spared myself much further fighting. But remember, the same reason which caused me to destroy Atlanta
will make it a great city in the future."
Whether or not Sherman actually said this (or something like it) to Clark Howell January of 1879, it is certain
that he thought it. Atlanta has always stood out - especially in the South. The reasons lie in the economic
circumstances that drove the physical growth of our city: Transportation, Topography, and Transactions
(real estate transactions, to be more precise).
This triumvirate would continually shape, and reshape, not just the layout of our city, but its collective
character as well. Yet at the time of our nation's birth, and indeed for the first couple of generations to
follow, these 3 were actually the region's 3 biggest liabilities.
Transportation:
After the Revolutionary War, our nation's economy was faced with a daunting handicap. A hurdle that, if
one used history as a guide, would take centuries to clear before commerce could flourish.
Commerce, after all, requires an exchange of goods and capital. In turn, any exchange requires logistics,
and in the heal-bone's-connected-to-the-leg-bone cause and effect nature of economics, this means
transportation. Throughout history, an efficient, reliable means of intra-continental transportation has
always been one of the greatest obstacles to the economic advancement of a society. And overland
transportation in early 19th century America was nothing if not primitive.
Europe, including the British Isles, is unique among the continents of the world in that it is criss-crossed
with an expansive network of navigable rivers that are both manageable in size and extend very far inland
(a fact the Vikings used to their advantage).
As for overland transportation, Europe had quite literally thousands of years to build its elaborate network
of roads. While in America, the system of roads was so negligible that the first road map of any area in the
New World wasn't published in North America until 17891 - almost 300 years after its discovery. What's
more, if the quantity of American roads was lacking, their quality was such that to call them roads at all
requires nothing short of hyperbole.
In fact, when one considers that the standards imposed upon the builders of our nation's first highway, the
grandiloquently named National Road (not begun until 1811), allowed for tree stumps of up to 15 inches in
height to be left standing in the road, it's a wonder that anyone traveled at all.2
With this in mind it should come as little surprise to learn that in early 19th century America it cost as much
per ton to ship goods across the Atlantic Ocean as it did to cart them just 30 miles by road. An inland city
without direct access to a navigable waterway under such conditions (like Atlanta) was quite simply an
impossibility.
Enter The Industrial Revolution. The efficiency of transportation in America began to grow in 1825, though
not with the advent of railroad, but rather with the opening of the Erie Canal. This engineering triumph
made it possible to move 1 ton of goods along its route for a mere $12 per ton, a vast improvement over
the $100 per ton for wagon portage. In less than 20 years following the opening of the Erie Canal,
Americans dug some 3,000 miles of canals, such was the belief that water carrying barges, rather than rails
carrying new steam locomotives, was the future of transportation.
The unbridled optimism in the efficacy of canals to open new markets was such that the merchants of
Charleston and Savannah petitioned the federal government for funds to underwrite exhaustive surveys
of the wilderness interior of north Georgia. The object of which was to uncover a suitable rout for a canal
that would join the Tennessee River at the spot where Chattanooga is now to a peninsular bend in the
Chattahoochee River at the site of a fruit tree crested Indian mound called "Standing Peach Tree" where
the Atlanta Water Works is today.
The final report on this survey explained (and this should come as no surprise to anyone who has driven
between Atlanta and Chattanooga) that the building of such a canal was hopelessly impractical. This was a
discouraging blow to the coastal merchants who, at the time saw the new technology of railroads as
unworkable.
And this was quite a reasonable assumption considering the realities of early railroads. To start with, the
early steam engines were drastically underpowered, relying as they did on the limited heat generated from
burning wood rather than coal. What's more, wood burning locomotives loosed swarms of red-hot cinders
that regularly ignited the countryside and proved to be a painful annoyance to the passengers who, forced
to ride with open windows, took to wryly calling them "eye drops".
As if that weren't enough, the cars pulled by these early locomotives were joined to one another by
nothing more sophisticated than lengths of chain, causing the cars to lurch with whiplash inducing
violence upon forward movement and slam into each other with battering ram force when slowed. Not
surprisingly, derailments (a new word at the time) became commonplace.
Yet despite these early problems, the first trains fulfilled a dream that mankind, in all of its achievements,
had never been able to accomplish. With the train, people could for the first time in history travel over
land faster than a running horse could carry them - a feat that canals could never hope to match.
As the railroad industry made improvements in rail transportation, these same east-coast merchants
lobbied for the government to lay railway lines to accomplish what canals could not. Naturally, those
vested with the task chose to stick to the already surveyed routs through which people had once hoped
would flow a great canal. The great railway would therefore be built between 2 cities that did not yet exist:
Chattanooga and Atlanta.
Thus, Atlanta's birth was due not to dubious treaties with various tribes of Cherokee and Creek Indians,
nor population growth, nor even Americans' oft derided or romanticized "spirit of expansion". Atlanta was
born when and where it was precisely because it simply could not have existed in that location at any point
in prior history.
While a few people understood that the advent of the railroads would bring about change, I would wager
that not one person alive at that time could have imagined just how profound that change would be.
Almost at once, America's lack of roads drove it to embrace what was quite simply a watershed in
technological advancement, and with it the Industrial Revolution that would transform a wilderness nation
into an economic juggernaut.
The impact of railroads simply cannot be overstated. So profound was this innovation that it actually
changed time itself. Before the advent of trains each town and hamlet erected a clock tower in its most
visible section to establish the time. It could be 2:00 PM in Decatur and 2:25 PM in Marietta -
simultaneously - and such would make no difference at all when it took a day to go from one to the other.
As railroads connected these towns in terms of travel time, such trivial ambiguity became disruptive
anarchy, and resulted in Federally mandated times in clearly delineated, yet wholly artificial, "time zones"
to establish basic order.
Still, all of this lay in the future when the 1836 session of the Georgia Legislature voted to allocate tax
revenues toward the building of this new railroad. Franklin Garrett, in his remarkable Atlanta and Environs,
tells the story of 2 legislators, who after the votes were counted, commented on their views of the effects
of this venture.
It seems that a Colonel James Calhoun of Decatur, in response to the sanguine outlook expressed by
fellow legislator Chapman Powell is reported to have complained that railroads were a mere nuisance and
pronounced that "The terminus of that railroad will never be any more than an eating house." To which
Calhoun was said to retort, "True, and one day you will see a time when it will eat up Decatur."
To be continued...
1. A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America 1789 by Christopher Colles
2. Which, incidentally, is the origin of the expression: “stumped” – when used to describe the condition of being stymied by a
metaphorical obstruction (usually a mental one).
reporter asked him why he burned the city As Ralph McGill told it in a 1969 National Geographic article, the
old general took the boy's hand and opened it. Pointing to his palm he said, "when I got to Atlanta, what
was left of the Confederacy could roughly be compared to your hand. Atlanta was the palm, and by destroying
it I spared myself much further fighting. But remember, the same reason which caused me to destroy Atlanta
will make it a great city in the future."
Whether or not Sherman actually said this (or something like it) to Clark Howell January of 1879, it is certain
that he thought it. Atlanta has always stood out - especially in the South. The reasons lie in the economic
circumstances that drove the physical growth of our city: Transportation, Topography, and Transactions
(real estate transactions, to be more precise).
This triumvirate would continually shape, and reshape, not just the layout of our city, but its collective
character as well. Yet at the time of our nation's birth, and indeed for the first couple of generations to
follow, these 3 were actually the region's 3 biggest liabilities.
Transportation:
After the Revolutionary War, our nation's economy was faced with a daunting handicap. A hurdle that, if
one used history as a guide, would take centuries to clear before commerce could flourish.
Commerce, after all, requires an exchange of goods and capital. In turn, any exchange requires logistics,
and in the heal-bone's-connected-to-the-leg-bone cause and effect nature of economics, this means
transportation. Throughout history, an efficient, reliable means of intra-continental transportation has
always been one of the greatest obstacles to the economic advancement of a society. And overland
transportation in early 19th century America was nothing if not primitive.
Europe, including the British Isles, is unique among the continents of the world in that it is criss-crossed
with an expansive network of navigable rivers that are both manageable in size and extend very far inland
(a fact the Vikings used to their advantage).
As for overland transportation, Europe had quite literally thousands of years to build its elaborate network
of roads. While in America, the system of roads was so negligible that the first road map of any area in the
New World wasn't published in North America until 17891 - almost 300 years after its discovery. What's
more, if the quantity of American roads was lacking, their quality was such that to call them roads at all
requires nothing short of hyperbole.
In fact, when one considers that the standards imposed upon the builders of our nation's first highway, the
grandiloquently named National Road (not begun until 1811), allowed for tree stumps of up to 15 inches in
height to be left standing in the road, it's a wonder that anyone traveled at all.2
With this in mind it should come as little surprise to learn that in early 19th century America it cost as much
per ton to ship goods across the Atlantic Ocean as it did to cart them just 30 miles by road. An inland city
without direct access to a navigable waterway under such conditions (like Atlanta) was quite simply an
impossibility.
Enter The Industrial Revolution. The efficiency of transportation in America began to grow in 1825, though
not with the advent of railroad, but rather with the opening of the Erie Canal. This engineering triumph
made it possible to move 1 ton of goods along its route for a mere $12 per ton, a vast improvement over
the $100 per ton for wagon portage. In less than 20 years following the opening of the Erie Canal,
Americans dug some 3,000 miles of canals, such was the belief that water carrying barges, rather than rails
carrying new steam locomotives, was the future of transportation.
The unbridled optimism in the efficacy of canals to open new markets was such that the merchants of
Charleston and Savannah petitioned the federal government for funds to underwrite exhaustive surveys
of the wilderness interior of north Georgia. The object of which was to uncover a suitable rout for a canal
that would join the Tennessee River at the spot where Chattanooga is now to a peninsular bend in the
Chattahoochee River at the site of a fruit tree crested Indian mound called "Standing Peach Tree" where
the Atlanta Water Works is today.
The final report on this survey explained (and this should come as no surprise to anyone who has driven
between Atlanta and Chattanooga) that the building of such a canal was hopelessly impractical. This was a
discouraging blow to the coastal merchants who, at the time saw the new technology of railroads as
unworkable.
And this was quite a reasonable assumption considering the realities of early railroads. To start with, the
early steam engines were drastically underpowered, relying as they did on the limited heat generated from
burning wood rather than coal. What's more, wood burning locomotives loosed swarms of red-hot cinders
that regularly ignited the countryside and proved to be a painful annoyance to the passengers who, forced
to ride with open windows, took to wryly calling them "eye drops".
As if that weren't enough, the cars pulled by these early locomotives were joined to one another by
nothing more sophisticated than lengths of chain, causing the cars to lurch with whiplash inducing
violence upon forward movement and slam into each other with battering ram force when slowed. Not
surprisingly, derailments (a new word at the time) became commonplace.
Yet despite these early problems, the first trains fulfilled a dream that mankind, in all of its achievements,
had never been able to accomplish. With the train, people could for the first time in history travel over
land faster than a running horse could carry them - a feat that canals could never hope to match.
As the railroad industry made improvements in rail transportation, these same east-coast merchants
lobbied for the government to lay railway lines to accomplish what canals could not. Naturally, those
vested with the task chose to stick to the already surveyed routs through which people had once hoped
would flow a great canal. The great railway would therefore be built between 2 cities that did not yet exist:
Chattanooga and Atlanta.
Thus, Atlanta's birth was due not to dubious treaties with various tribes of Cherokee and Creek Indians,
nor population growth, nor even Americans' oft derided or romanticized "spirit of expansion". Atlanta was
born when and where it was precisely because it simply could not have existed in that location at any point
in prior history.
While a few people understood that the advent of the railroads would bring about change, I would wager
that not one person alive at that time could have imagined just how profound that change would be.
Almost at once, America's lack of roads drove it to embrace what was quite simply a watershed in
technological advancement, and with it the Industrial Revolution that would transform a wilderness nation
into an economic juggernaut.
The impact of railroads simply cannot be overstated. So profound was this innovation that it actually
changed time itself. Before the advent of trains each town and hamlet erected a clock tower in its most
visible section to establish the time. It could be 2:00 PM in Decatur and 2:25 PM in Marietta -
simultaneously - and such would make no difference at all when it took a day to go from one to the other.
As railroads connected these towns in terms of travel time, such trivial ambiguity became disruptive
anarchy, and resulted in Federally mandated times in clearly delineated, yet wholly artificial, "time zones"
to establish basic order.
Still, all of this lay in the future when the 1836 session of the Georgia Legislature voted to allocate tax
revenues toward the building of this new railroad. Franklin Garrett, in his remarkable Atlanta and Environs,
tells the story of 2 legislators, who after the votes were counted, commented on their views of the effects
of this venture.
It seems that a Colonel James Calhoun of Decatur, in response to the sanguine outlook expressed by
fellow legislator Chapman Powell is reported to have complained that railroads were a mere nuisance and
pronounced that "The terminus of that railroad will never be any more than an eating house." To which
Calhoun was said to retort, "True, and one day you will see a time when it will eat up Decatur."
To be continued...
1. A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America 1789 by Christopher Colles
2. Which, incidentally, is the origin of the expression: “stumped” – when used to describe the condition of being stymied by a
metaphorical obstruction (usually a mental one).
