A passionate journalist and charismatic public speaker, Henry Woodfin Grady was known as the "The Spokesman of the New South." In the late 19th Century, he engaged in a near one-man campaign to bring prosperity to Atlanta and the rest of the South, so damaged and depressed from the recent American Civil War. While controversial, his belief that Northern investment in the South could change it from a region of farms into a region of industry was eventually widely accepted.