Major John Fletcher Hanson and Nathaniel Edwin Harris, two former Confederate officers who became prominent citizens in the town of Macon, Georgia, after the war, strongly believed that the South needed to improve its technology to compete with the industrial revolution that was occurring throughout the North.[3][4][5] Many Southerners at this time agreed with this idea, known as the "New South Creed".[6] Its strongest proponent was Henry W. Grady, editor of The Atlanta Constitution during the 1880s.[6] A technology school was thought necessary because the American South of that era was mostly agrarian, and few technical developments were occurring.