The question of what makes and destroys a community is part of human curiosity. Although current scholarship points to a persistence of community, Cassville, Georgia would seem to be an exception. Antebellum Cassville was wealthy, educated, and slaveowning, but in 1864, Union troops occupied and destroyed it. In the Civil Wars aftermath, railroad towns like neighboring Cartersville flourished while Cassville increasingly resembled an economic and social backwater. However, after the war, Cassville was spared some of the social trauma that rocked other Upcountry communities. During the 1870s, the economic instability which ruined many benefited Cassville. Merchants benefited from the increase in single-crop cultivation and many freedmen became landowners. The economic resurgence allowed white residents to fashion an identity based on the Lost Cause, while the growing black community founded organizations strengthening their own bonds. Although after the towns destruction the community was irrevocably changed, a new Cassville emerged and flourished.