Civil War Years
During the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America maintained a gun powder factory in Augusta. Car load of gun powder would be transported on the Georgia Railroad to various battlefields in the "Western Campaign."
Although the Civil War saw heavy damage to railroads such as the Georgia Railroad, management used their considerable resources to restore operation as quickly as possible. The Georgia Railroad even resorted to temporarily abandoning the Athens branch to secure enough rail to reopen its main line. Returning Confederate soldiers were given free rides home to the extent that the company's limited rail network would allow.
They also honored all Confederate script issued by their bank. No depositor lost their savings even if Confederate money had no value. It helped that the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company had the financial strength to honor those promises. Meanwhile, most southern banks were busy repudiating any obligations related to Confederate currency. This helped solidify the bank's reputation as one of the premiere banks in the southeastern United States well into the 20th century.
Read more about this topic: Georgia Railroad And Banking Company
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or years:
“To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water,—so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Soldier, there is a war between the mind
And sky, between thought and day and night. It is
For that the poet is always in the sun,
Patches the moon together in his room
To his Virgilian cadences, up down,
Up down. It is a war that never ends.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)