In response to competition from South Carolina, the State of Georgia embraced the fledgling railroad industry. The idea was to establish new trade opportunities by building a railroad system that would connect Georgia to the rest of the United States. Key to that plan was constructing a state-owned railroad line that would terminate in north Georgia at a point south of the Chattahoochee River. That point, of course, would one day become the City of Atlanta.
Initially, the budding community around the terminus point consisted mostly of men employed to construct the rail lines, and those businesspeople who catered to the roughneck railroad community. But, as word of the coming new form of transportation began to spread throughout the region, the area around the terminus site became a magnet for those seeking a better life for themselves and their families. This dynamic would eventually set-in motion a clash between the two factions for the soul of the community… a clash that would begin with the granting of a city charter that gave citizens the right to, among other things, establish laws.
It’s pretty easy to imagine the amount of difficulty the newly chartered City of Atlanta experienced trying to bring the rule of law to a community that, since its inception, essentially had no laws. Atlanta, in its early days, was little more than a rowdy, frontier, railroad camp and, in the minds of many of the city’s “free thinkers” it needed to stay that way. To them, the newly granted city charter and its laws amounted to little more than the government trying to tell them how to live their lives.
This week, the story of a recalcitrant community intent on remaining free and rowdy is front and center as one of the Stories of Atlanta.
