When Georgia, with the rest of the Southern States, had passed safely through the reconstruction period, the people, as has been seen, found themselves facing new conditions and new possibilities. Slavery had been abolished utterly and forever; and wise men breathed freer when they saw that a great obstacle to progress and development had been abolished with it. Instinctively everybody felt that here was cause for congratulation. A few public men, bolder than the rest, looking out on the prospect, thanked God that slavery was no more. They expected to be attacked for such utterances, but they were applauded; and it was soon discovered, much to the surprise of everybody, that the best sentiment of the South was heartily glad that slavery was out of the way. Thus, with new conditions, new prospects, and new hopes,--with a new fortune, in fact,--it was natural that some lively prophet should lift up his voice and cry, "Behold the New South!" And it was and is the new South,--the old South made new by events; the old South with new channels, in which its Anglo-Saxon energies may display themselves; the old South with new possibilities of greatness, that would never have offered themselves while slavery lasted. After these hopes, and in pursuit of these prospects, Georgia has led the way. Hundreds of miles of new railroads have been built in her borders since the dark days of reconstruction, hundreds of new factories have been built, immense marble beds and granite quarries have been put in operation, new towns have sprung into existence, and in thousands of new directions employment has been given to labor and capital. In short, the industrial progress the State has made since 1870 is more than double that of the previous fifty years.