Friday, January 22, 2010

Was urbanization crucial to southern life after the Civil War

Although the North is known for its industrialization, urbanization played an important role in the South, as well. The North is known for its big, industrialized cities, but the South developed a few of its own urban centers, as well. Atlanta, Georgia, a relatively new city to begin with, was burned down during the civil war and had to be reconstructed. Of the books Dr. Chambliss reviewed in his essay, I would probably most throroughly enjoy Atlanta: An Illustrated History, by Andy Ambrose, because of its positive spin and its thorough history of Atlanta, a city that continued to grow and make progress through urbanization. An example of Southern urbanization in Atlanta is the investment in progress made by Henry Grady, a newspaper editor who turned away from the traditional southern mentality and tried to move Atlanta in a different direction during Reconstruction.
The South did participate in urbanization, but it is still to this day firmly enveloped in its agriculture. Urbanization was crucial to the South because it changed the population concentrations and led to modern industry, among other developments, but it was not as strong in the South as it was in the North.

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