Atlantans often joke about their city's past by saying, "We have no heritage. Sherman burned it all."

Charred rubble, plundering Union soldiers, Rhett and Scarlett, white- columned homes are all image, real and fictional, which have been intermingled to represent the Lost City of the Lost Cause.

But the character of Atlanta is not explained by the the destruction; rather, it is to be seen in those who came to the city after the Civil War to create a new order.

By the time of the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, Atlanta had nine times as many people as it had had in 1860. It was the largest city in the state, and it was staking its claim on being the capital of the New South.

The leading urban centers in the region were strung along the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River. Places like Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Memphis acted as receptors, receiving raw materials, mainly cotton, from farms up stream, which they, in turn, shipped on for processing in the North or in England. If Atlanta were to succeed, it would do so in a way that no other metropolis had yet done: it would base its commercial hopes on rail transportation exclusively.

The challenges that faced Atlantans in 1865 have been recurring; they are as pressing today as they were then. The first and most critical task was the rebuilding and expansion of the economy. Without new businesses and new jobs, Atlanta would remain little more than a junction town on a railroad crossroad at one time called Terminus. Those who returned to Atlanta in 1865 and the new immigrants who joined them could not just sit back and wait for the destiny of the city to be realized. They had to outdo competitors in rival towns such as Augusta, Macon, and Milledgeville.

A second task was the rebuilding of the city, a process each generation of Atlantans has helped to shape. Those who rebuilt the city in the late 1860s followed the contours that their predecessors had established.

Rebuilding Atlanta was a relatively simple task compared to the final challenge that faced those who came to the city after the Civil War: the building of a new social order. It was difficult because of the centuries of slavery that had created a chasm between the races. In 1865 Atlantans set out to build a successful biracial city. An accommodation was worked out: the domination of slavery was replaced by the control of the color line.

For many white Atlantans in 1865 it seemed that the scars of the war would never disappear. Not only was the city in ruins, but an army of occupation was centered in Atlanta when the 1867 Reconstruction Act created the third Military District.

To top it all off, Northerners, known derisively as carpetbaggers, had come to the city and through their Republican connections had risen to positions of power and influence. Yet all of this adversity presented the city with a chance for growth and a route to regional dominance. The new generation of postwar Atlantans was not about to let the memories of the war get in the way of economic development. They saw their opportunities, and they took them.

Atlanta was chosen to be the command center of the Third Military District, which included Georgia, Florida, and Alabama because its railroad lines made it a center of transportation.

While white Atlantans bristled at the presence of federal troops in their city during Reconstruction, the military presence did contribute to the economy. Not only did soldiers and officers spend their disposable income in city stores, but the army constructed McPherson Barracks with local materials and purchased food and provisions from Atlanta entrepreneurs.

Reconstruction also involved the ratification of a new state constitution to replace the one nullified by secession.

In 1868, a Constitutional Convention was held in Atlanta by military order and under federal supervision. Once again, white Atlantans bemoaned the "Scalawag" Constitution, but its ratification brought them both the State Capitol and public schools.

Visitors to the Capitol helped to support a new luxury hotel, the Kimball House. Although white leaders acted vigorously over the next decade to end federal occupation and control, they worked even harder to retain the capital in Atlanta at the end of Reconstruction.

When the new post-Reconstruction constitution was ratified in 1877, Atlanta was confirmed in a referendum as the State Capitol.

The practical leadership in Atlanta who found advantage in adversity is best represented by a Georgia native son, Henry W. Grady, and a carpetbagger from New England, Hannibal I. Kimball, whose tireless efforts championed Atlanta's growth as the Gate City to a New South.

Grady, the Atlanta Constitution editor in the 1880s who went before Northern audiences declaring that the war was over and that a New South could be built by investment in factories, did more than just write editorials and give inspirational speeches. He schemed with Republican leaders and carpetbag investors to build cotton mills and to hold regional expositions.

He organized political efforts around the state to elect governors and senators who would support Atlanta's economic interests. Grady was willing to rise above the highly charged political climate in the aftermath of the war in order to advance his city's interests.

Kimball came to the South in 1866 as an agent for George Pullman, who was expanding markets for his railroad sleeping cars, but he was soon using his political contacts and his entrepreneurial skills to build the Opera House that became the State Capitol, to erect the Kimball House - the city's leading hotel, to build textile factories, and to promote the city through expositions.

Grady and Kimball were instrumental in promoting two major expositions in the city: the International Cotton Exposition of 1881 and the Piedmont Exposition of 1887.

These regional fairs helped to present a new image for the city as well as the region. As director-general, Kimball played a leading role in the 1881 International Cotton Exposition, which he hoped would downplay regional differences and bring in industrial development. During the 1881 exposition General William T. Sherman, who was a substantial investor in the fair, gave one of many speeches that mouthed the words of reconciliation that were so dear to the hearts of New South promoters. Noting that he had come "to look upon these buildings where once we had battlefields," Sherman went on to proclaim that "we are now in a position to say, every one of us, great and small, Thank God we are American citizens." Sherman's pronouncement was echoed in the boosterish report of Kimball who declared, "Thank God I have lived to see sectionalism ended - the exposition has driven out the last vestige." Boosting the city Sectionalism was seen by Kimball, Grady, and other Atlanta boosters as an impediment to growth; its demise was to be a prelude to industrial development, a major goal of the 1881 exposition. The centerpiece of the fair was a model textile factory, built to show that the South could process as well as produce cotton. The message was clear: invest in textile production in the South, where the cotton is produced. Grady's promotional work was most prominent in the Piedmont Exposition of 1887, where he orchestrated the major event of the fair, the visit of President Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic president since the Civil War. Ensconced at the Kimball House where he was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds, the president and his wife were taken to the fair and then feted from one end of Peachtree Street to the other. Building a new economic order was accompanied by the physical reconstruction of Atlanta's town center. In 1865, a new Union Station had to be built, railroad tracks replaced, roundhouses reconstructed, and commercial buildings raised. The rapid success of the rebuilding is demonstrated in an 1871 bird's eye view of Atlanta drawn by Albert Ruger, an itinerant viewmaker who captured the vitality of the growing town. There were no scars of war apparent in the lithograph that Ruger produced. At its center was a rail corridor along which the new passenger station, freight depots, roundhouses, and industrial buildings were aligned. Commercial blocks of two-and three-story brick buildings clustered near the Union Station. Just beyond, and spreading out seven blocks in all directions were the city's residential areas. Peachtree, Marietta, Whitehall, Alabama, and Decatur streets served as hosts to Italianate brick buildings whose first-floor awnings spread over sidewalks covering wares of retailers who wanted to entice shoppers into their stores. On the second and third stories of these structures, offices of wholesalers and professionals occupied less expensive space. Postwar industries were situated along the three major railroads that led to the center of town. These were primarily operations catering to a local market. Planning mills, foundries, a rolling mill and iron works produced materials for the rebuilding of the city. A grist mill, flour mill and brewery processed agricultural produces for nearby consumption. Albert Ruger caught Atlanta at the beginning of a new age: the Streetcar City was about to supersede the Walking City; the Compact City was about to be replaced by the Suburban City. 1871 was a year of incorporation for the Atlanta Street Railway Company, whose founding fathers, Richard Peters and George Washington Adair, would soon run mule- drawn trolley lines from Five Points out Peachtree, Decatur, Marietta, and Whitehall streets. Conveniently, Peters and Adair owned land along these routes, so they soon were subdividing their property in Midtown and West End for suburban homes. With Peters' assistance, the city's white elite clustered north along the Peachtree Street ridge in the 1880s. Other Victorian-style homes of prospering citizens also lined southside streets such as Capitol Avenue and Washington Street. When city fathers in the 1880s set out to create a landscaped park in the mold of Central Park in New York City, they chose land donated by Lemuel P. Grant on the south side of town. Grant Park was landscaped with gently curving walking paths and carriage roads through wooded lands, with open fields and a picturesque lake. The Atlanta of 1890 had suburban avenues of large, stylish houses, lined with trees and serviced by trolley cars, emanating out from a growing town center. Richard Peters was pulling development of wealthy suburban housing toward his northern holdings, but he had competition from other landowner-developers such as Lemuel P. Grant, who counted on his donation of land for a park, where those living nearby could easily stroll to escape the pressures of urban living, making his remaining land even more attractive for upper-income housing. By 1890, textile factories - Fulton Mills to the east of town and Exposition Mills to the west - had been constructed. but Atlanta was not the Lowell of the South. Other factories were in evidence, but these were primarily processors of regional raw materials for local and regional markets. There were lumber mills, terra cotta, paint and soap factories, and gin and cottonseed oil equipment factories. Despite the promotional efforts of Grady, who died in December 1889, neither had Atlanta become an industrial metropolis nor had the South become a rival to the North. Atlanta had outstripped its city rivals elsewhere in the state, but it had yet to take its place among the leading metropolises of the nation. The new color line The rebuilding of the economy and the physical structure of the city were the visible manifestations of revitalization after the war. The "invisible" dimension, of the new Atlanta was the color line. The chains of slavery had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but they were quickly replaced by the harness of the color line. Postwar Atlanta was dramatically different from its Prewar counterpart. Not only did the population of the town more than double from 10,000 to 20,000 between 1860 and 1870, but the black percentage increased to almost 45 percent. A new generation of citizens, known for the most part as freedmen, came from nearby plantations for the opportunities that a growing city would offer and for the protection and assistance of Union forces and the specially established relief organization, the Freedman's Bureau. While the Union forces and Freedman's Bureau could help with the immediate survival needs for blacks, which included jobs, housing, food, and clothing, they could not solve the long-term problem of creating a just society in which black citizens could stand on an equal footing with their white neighbors. The underlying problem throughout the period of Reconstruction was the relentless effort by whites to assert a more complete control of blacks. Thus, while there was a great deal of progress by black Atlantans, this took place in the face of active white opposition. In addition, the early gains under the protection of military rule were quickly wiped out when white Atlantans regained control of the political process. Thus, while blacks were elected to City Council and helped to establish public schools in the early 1870s, they continued to be beset by the press of white Atlantans to expand a color line that would limit their opportunities, hopes and dreams. Residential segregation developed in the aftermath of the migration of blacks seeking opportunities in postwar Atlanta. These newcomers clustered on the east side of town near Auburn Avenue, to the south in the area called Summerhill (now the site of Atlanta Stadium), and to the west near Hunter Street (now Martin Luther Jr. Drive). By 1890, the city's black churches, schools, and clubs were located in these enclaves. Although black Atlantans continued to live in other mini-neighborhoods elsewhere in the city, the major black districts became a "secret city," known only to their inhabitants and ignored by white Atlanta. With the introduction of the white-only primary in city elections in 1872, black citizens lost the power of the vote to guarantee their fair share of city services. Their "separate, and unequal" enclaves were provided with inferior public schools, unpaved streets, and intermittent water and sewer connections. However, despite the restraints of the color line, the achievements of black Atlantans in the decades after the Civil War were immediate and long-lasting. The institutions - including churches, small businesses, and schools - that blacks established helped with the pressing needs of the first wave of city dwellers, but they also helped later generations cope with new challenges. In 1895, the Rev. E.R. Carter, the first historian of black Atlanta, looked back with pride on the city that members of his race had helped to create. "All around her borders tower, like the mighty hosts of Zion, some of the finest colleges, universities, and seminaries for the Black Side, in all this southland, regardless of class or kind." Rev. Carter was referring to the legacy of what i s now the Atlanta University Center, whose inception began in 1867 with the charter of Atlanta University. With an initial purchase of 70 acres, AU was located on Atlanta' s west side, on Diamond Hill, a site noted by historian Clarence A. Bacote as "one of the highest elevations in the city, commanding a view in every direction." Classes at AU began in 1869 in the newly constructed North Hall (now Gaines Hall of Morris Brown College). In the following years a campus was constructed, including the 1882 landmark Stone Hall (now Fountain Hall), whose clock tower still watches over the west side. In the 1880s, Spelman and Morehouse campuses began their evolution on nearby land. Meanwhile, Clark College, was located on high ground to the south of the city (on the present site of Carver High School), and Morris Brown began its growth on the Boulevard ridge to the east of the downtown. Copyright 1987, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, All rights reserved. By Dana F. White and Timothy Crimmins Special to The Journal-Constitution, Atlanta at 150: Celebrating 150 years of `can-do' spirit Reconstruction transformed city: into metropolis., 10-04-1987, pp S/01.