“We’ve got it. We need to promote it,” said John Culpepper, chairman of the Georgia Civil War Commission.

The Civil War Sesquicentennial will kick off April 12, 2011.

A dozen local history buffs backed Culpepper on Monday as he urged the Rome City Commission to join both the state’s initiative and a tri-state alliance to promote sites in Northwest Georgia, Southeast Tennessee and Northeast Alabama.

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“It takes a lot of planning and we only have three years,” said Benny Terry, commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Gen. Nathan B. Forrest Camp in Rome.

Terry said the camp has applied to host the annual Georgia SCV reunion in 2011 and already is meeting with potential partners, such as the Greater Rome Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Rome’s arms factories — and its rivers, forts, hospitals and railroad — played key roles before, during and after the war, said local historian Hugh Durden.

“We were the heaviest-fortified Georgia city, other than Atlanta and those on the seacoast,” he said. “The people of Rome should know what their history is.”

Culpepper said the rest of the world will be interested, as well.

The Chickamauga Battlefield and heritage trail draws 900,000 visitors each year, he said, and adds an estimated $36 million to the economy.

“Rome is a vital part of that story,” Culpepper said. “If the federal forces had won, they would have gone straight to Rome to destroy the manufacturing center.”

Culpepper said the Resaca Battlefield south of Dalton on Interstate 75 is slated to be the tourist “portal” for Georgia and a $3 million upgrade to its interpretive center is under way. Grants also will be available to other participating communities.

Mayor Wright Bagby Jr. said the city will put together a committee to look at possibilities.

“The American Civil War is very important,” he said. “All of us sitting here are who we are because of it.”

Heritage tourism is the fastest-growing segment of the fast-growing tourism market, Culpepper said.