of the strong men who played leading parts in the subsequent commercial upbuilding of the place:  such men as the late General Alfred Austell, Captain James W. English, and the three Inman brothers, Samuel, John, and Hugh—­to mention but a few names.  The First National Bank, established by General Austell, is, I believe, Atlanta’s largest bank to-day, and was literally the first national bank established in Georgia, if not in the whole South, after the war.

Woodrow Wilson was admitted to the bar in Atlanta, and, if I mistake not, practised law in an office not far from that meeting place of highways called Five Points.  Here, at Five Points, two important trails crossed, long before there was any Atlanta:  the north-and-south trail between Savannah and Ross’s Landing, and the east-and-west trail, which followed the old Indian trails between Charleston and New Orleans.  When people from this part of the country wished to go to Ohio, Indiana, or the Mississippi Valley, they would take the old north-and-south trail to Ross’s Landing, follow the Tennessee River to where it empties into the Ohio, near Paducah, Kentucky, and proceed thence to Mississippi.

In the thirties, Atlanta—­or rather the site of Atlanta, for the city was not founded until 1840—­was on the border of white civilization in northern Georgia, all the country to the north of the Chattahoochee River, which flows a few miles distant from the city, having belonged to the Cherokee Indians, who had been moved there from Florida.  Even in those times the Cherokees were civilized, as Indians go, for they lived in huts and practised agriculture.  Of course, however, their civilization was not comparable with that of the white man.  If they had been as civilized as he, they might have driven him out of Florida, instead of having been themselves driven out, and they might have driven him out of Georgia, too, instead of having been pushed on, as they were, to the Indian Territory—­eighteen thousand of them, under military supervision, on boats from Ross’s Landing—­leaving the beautiful white Cherokee rose, which grows wild and in great profusion, in the spring, as almost their sole memorial on Georgia soil.

As Georgia became settled the trails developed into wagon and stage routes, and later they were followed, approximately, by the railroads.  After three railroads had reached Atlanta, the State of Georgia engaged in what may have been the first adventure, in this country, along the lines of government-owned railroads:  namely, the building of the Western & Atlantic, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to form a link between the lower South and the rapidly developing West.  This road was built in the forties, and it was along its line that Johnston retreated before Sherman, from Chattanooga to Atlanta.  Though it is now leased and operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad Company, it is still owned by the State of Georgia.  The lease, however, expires soon, and (an interesting fact in view of the continued agitation in other parts of the country for government ownership of corporations) there is a strong sentiment in Georgia in favor of selling the railroad; for it is estimated that, at a fair price, it would yield a sum sufficient not only to wipe out the entire bonded indebtedness of the State ($7,000,000), but to leave ten or twelve millions clear in the State treasury.