The history of Georgia in the United States of America spans

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

time to the present-day U.S. state of

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. The area was inhabited by Native American tribes for thousands of years. A modest Spanish presence was established in the late 16th century, mostly centered on Catholic missions. The Spanish had largely withdrawn from the territory by the early 18th century, although they had settlements in nearby Florida. They had little influence historically in what would become

. (Most Spanish place names in Georgia date from the 19th century, not from the age of colonization.) English settlers arrived in the 1730s, led by

James Oglethorpe James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British soldier, Member of Parliament, and philanthropist, as well as the founder of the colony of Georgia in what was then British America. As a social reformer, he hoped to r ...

. The name "Georgia", after

George II of Great Britain , house = Hanover , religion = Protestant , father = George I of Great Britain , mother = Sophia Dorothea of Celle , birth_date = 30 October / 9 November 1683 , birth_place = Herrenhausen Palace,Cannon. or Leine ...

, dates from the creation of this colony. Originally dedicated to the concept of common man, the colony forbade slavery. Failing to gain sufficient laborers from England, the colony overturned the ban in 1749 and began to import enslaved Africans. Slaves numbered 18,000 in the colony at the time of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. The citizens of Georgia agreed with the other American Colonies concerning trade rights and issues of taxation. On April 8, 1776, royal officials had been expelled and Georgia's Provincial Congress issued a constitutional document that served as an interim constitution until adoption of the state Constitution of 1777. The British occupied much of Georgia from 1780 until shortly before the official end of the American Revolution in 1783. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the

U.S. Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...

on January 2, 1788. European Americans began to settle in Georgia, although it was territory of both the Creek and the Cherokee nations. They pressured state and the federal government to remove the Indians. After Indian Removal in the 1830s, under President Jackson, the pace of settlement by European Americans increased rapidly. The new cotton gin, invented at the end of the 18th century, enabled the profitable processing of short-staple cotton, which could now be grown in the inland and upcountry regions. This change stimulated the cotton boom in Georgia and much of the Deep South, resulting in cotton being a main economic driver, cultivated on slave labor. Based on enslaved labor, planters cleared and developed large cotton plantations. Many became immensely wealthy, but most of the yeomen whites did not own slaves and worked family subsistence farms. On January 19, 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and on February 8, 1861, joined other Southern states, all slave societies, to form the

Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...

. Georgia contributed nearly one hundred twenty thousand soldiers to the Confederacy, with about five thousand Georgians (both black and white) joining the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states. It proved essential to th ...

. The first major battle in the state was the

Battle of Chickamauga The Battle of Chickamauga, fought on September 19–20, 1863, between U.S. and Confederate forces in the American Civil War, marked the end of a Union offensive, the Chickamauga Campaign, in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. I ...

, a Confederate victory, and the last major Confederate victory in the west. In 1864, Union General

William Tecumseh Sherman William Tecumseh Sherman ( ; February 8, 1820February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his com ...

's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign. The

burning of Atlanta The Battle of Atlanta was a battle of the Atlanta Campaign fought during the American Civil War on July 22, 1864, just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia. Continuing their summer campaign to seize the important rail and supply hub of Atlanta, Uni ...

(which was a commercially vital railroad hub but not yet the state capital) was followed by

Sherman's March to the Sea Sherman's March to the Sea (also known as the Savannah campaign or simply Sherman's March) was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by William Tecumseh Sherman, maj ...

, which laid waste to a wide swath of the state from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864. These events became iconic in the state's memory and dealt a devastating economic blow to the entire Confederacy. After the war, Georgians endured a period of economic hardship.

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

was a period of military occupation. With enfranchisement of

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...

, who allied with the Republican Party, a biracial legislature was elected. It established public education and welfare institutions for the first time in the state, and initiated economic programs. Reconstruction ended in 1875 after white Democrats regained political control of the state, through violence and intimidation at elections. They passed new laws and constitutional amendments that

disenfranchised Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...

blacks and many poor whites near the turn of the century. In the Jim Crow era from the late 19th century to 1964, blacks were suppressed as second-class citizens, nearly excluded from politics. Thousands of blacks migrated North to escape these conditions and associated violence. The state was predominately rural, with an agricultural economy based on cotton into the 20th century. All residents of the state suffered in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The many training bases and munitions plants established in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

stimulated the economy, and provided some new opportunities for blacks. During the broad-based activism of the

Civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

in the 1950s and 1960s,

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, Georgia was the base of African-American leader, minister

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

The state integrated public facilities. After 1950 the economy grew and became more diverse, with cotton receding in importance. Atlanta became a major regional city and transportation hub, expanding into neighboring communities through its fast-growing suburbs. Politically, Georgia was part of the

Solid South The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states. The Southern bloc existed especial ...

until 1964, when it first voted for a Republican candidate for president. Democratic candidates continued to receive majority-white support in state and local elections until the 1990s, when the realignment of conservative whites shifted to the Republican Party. Atlanta was the host of the

1996 Summer Olympics The 1996 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXVI Olympiad, also known as Atlanta 1996 and commonly referred to as the Centennial Olympic Games) were an international multi-sport event held from July 19 to August 4, 1996, in Atlanta, ...

, which marked the 100th anniversary of the modern

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...

. Georgia would grow rapidly both population wise and economically in the late 20th to early 21st century. In 2014, Georgia's population topped 10 million people, and was the fourth fastest growing U.S. state from 2013 to 2014.

Pre-Colonial era

Before European contact, Native American cultures are divided under archaeological criteria into four lengthy time periods of culture:

Paleo __NOTOC__ ''Paleo'' may refer to: Prehistoric Era, Age, or Period * Paleolithic, a prehistoric Era, Age, or Period of human history People * David Strackany, aka "Paleo", an American folk singer-songwriter Art, entertainment, and media * ''P ...

, Archaic,

Woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

, and Mississippian. Their cultures were identified by characteristics of artifacts and other archeological evidence, including earthwork

mound A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher ...

s that survive to the present and are visible aboveground. Human occupation of Georgia can be dated to at least 13,250 years ago. This was one of the most dramatic periods of climate change in recent earth history, toward the end of the

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

, in the Late Pleistocene epoch. Sea levels were more than 200 feet lower than present levels. The Atlantic Ocean shoreline was 100 or more miles seaward of its current boundary. A 2003 research project undertaken by

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

researchers Ervan G, Garrison, Sherri L. Littman, and Megan Mitchell, looked at and reported on fossils and artifacts associated with

Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary is one of the largest near shore live-bottom reefs in the southeastern United States. The sanctuary, designated in January 1981, is located off Sapelo Island, Georgia, and is one of 14 marine sanctuaries and m ...

, which is located more than beyond today's shoreline, and 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 m) below the Atlantic Ocean. As recently as 8,000 years ago, Gray's Reef was dry ground, attached to the mainland. The researchers uncovered artifacts from a period of occupation by

Clovis culture The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 a ...

and Paleoindian hunters dating back more than 10,000 years. The

South Appalachian Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earth ...

, the last of many

mound building A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

Native American cultures, lasted from 800 to 1500 AD. This culture developed urban societies distinguished by their construction of truncated

earthworks Earthworks may refer to: Construction *Earthworks (archaeology), human-made constructions that modify the land contour * Earthworks (engineering), civil engineering works created by moving or processing quantities of soil *Earthworks (military), m ...

pyramids, or

platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

s; as well as their hierarchical

chiefdom A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a ...

s; intensive village-based maize horticulture, which enabled the development of more dense populations; and creation of ornate

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

, shell and mica

paraphernalia Paraphernalia most commonly refers to a group of apparatus, equipment, or furnishing used for a particular activity. For example, an avid sports fan may cover their walls with football and/or basketball paraphernalia. Historical legal term In l ...

adorned with a series of motifs known as the

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (formerly the Southern Cult), aka S.E.C.C., is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture. It coincided with their ado ...

(SECC). The largest sites surviving in present-day Georgia are Kolomoki in Early County, Etowah in

Bartow County Bartow County is located in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 108,901, up from 100,157 in 2010. The county seat is Cartersville. Traditionally considered part of northwest Georgia, B ...

Nacoochee Mound The Nacoochee Mound (Smithsonian trinomial 9WH3) is an archaeological site on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in White County, in the northeast part of the U.S. state of Georgia. Georgia State Route 17 and Georgia State Route 75 have a ju ...

in White County, and

Ocmulgee National Monument Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (formerly Ocmulgee National Monument) in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans in the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are majo ...

in Macon.

European exploration

At the time of

European colonization of the Americas During the Age of Discovery, a large scale European colonization of the Americas took place between about 1492 and 1800. Although the Norse had explored and colonized areas of the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short t ...

, the historic

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...

-speaking

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

and

Muskogean Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...

-speaking

Yamasee The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees or Yemassees) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The Yamas ...

Hitchiti The Hitchiti ( ) were a historic indigenous tribe in the Southeast United States. They formerly resided chiefly in a town of the same name on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, four miles below Chiaha, in western present-day Georgia. The n ...

peoples lived throughout Georgia. The coastal regions were occupied by groups of small, Muskogean-speaking tribes with a loosely shared heritage, consisting mostly of the

Guale Guale was a historic Native American chiefdom of Mississippian culture peoples located along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands. Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in the chiefdom in the late 16t ...

-associated groups to the east and the

Timucua The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The v ...

group to the south. This group of 35 tribes had lands that extended into central Florida; they were bordered by the Hitchiti and their territory to the west. The Muskogean peoples were related by language to the three large Muskogean nations that occupied territories between the Mississippi River and the Cherokee: the Choctaw,

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classif ...

and

Coushatta The Coushatta ( cku, Koasati, Kowassaati or Kowassa:ti) are a Muskogean-speaking Native American people now living primarily in the U.S. states of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. When first encountered by Europeans, they lived in the terri ...

. There were also a few other small Muskogean tribes along the Florida-Alabama Gulf Coast region. Archaeology shows that these historic peoples were in this region, at the very least, from the 12th century to colonial times. The name for Appalachia came from the Timucuan language, and a specific group from northern Florida called the

Apalachee The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River,B ...

. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León may have sailed along the coast during his exploration of Florida. In 1526,

Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (c. 1480 – 18 October 1526) was a Spanish magistrate and explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, one of the first European attempts at a settlement in what is now the United State ...

attempted to establish a colony on an island, possibly near St. Catherines Island. At

San Miguel de Gualdape San Miguel de Gualdape (sometimes San Miguel de Guadalupe) is a former Spanish colony in present-day Georgetown County, South Carolina, founded in 1526 by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.In early 1521, Ponce de León had made a poorly documented, disas ...

, the first

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

took place in the boundaries of what are today the United States. From 1539 to 1542 Hernando de Soto, a Spanish '' conquistador'', led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day southern United States searching for gold, and a passage to China. A vast undertaking, de Soto's North American expedition ranged across parts of the modern states of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. His expedition traversed much of the state of Georgia from south to north, and it recorded encountering many native groups along the way. These have largely been identified as part of the Mississippian culture and its chiefdoms. King Site Aerial HRoe 2018

An expedition of French Protestants founded the colonial settlement of

Charlesfort The Charlesfort-Santa Elena Site is an important early colonial archaeological site on Parris Island, South Carolina. It contains the archaeological remains of a French settlement called Charlesfort, settled in 1562 and abandoned the following y ...

in 1562 on

Parris Island Parris is both a given name and surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name * Parris Afton Bonds, American novelist * Parris Campbell (born 1997), American football player * Parris Duffus (born 1970), retired American ice hockey go ...

off the coast of South Carolina.

Jean Ribault Jean Ribault (also spelled ''Ribaut'') (1520 – October 12, 1565) was a French naval officer, navigator, and a colonizer of what would become the southeastern United States. He was a major figure in the French attempts to colonize Florida. A H ...

and his party of French

Huguenots The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

settled an area in the

Port Royal Sound Port Royal Sound is a coastal sound, or inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, located in the Sea Islands region, in Beaufort County in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It is the estuary of several rivers, the largest of which is the Broad River. Geograp ...

area of present-day South Carolina. Within a year the colony failed. Most of the colonists followed

René Goulaine de Laudonnière Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière (c. 1529–1574) was a French Huguenot explorer and the founder of the French colony of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida. Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot, sent Jean Ribault and Laudonnière ...

south and founded a new outpost called

Fort Caroline Fort Caroline was an attempted French colonial settlement in Florida, located on the banks of the St. Johns River in present-day Duval County. It was established under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière on 22 June, 1564, follow ...

in present-day Florida. Over the next few decades, a number of Spanish explorers from

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

visited the inland region of present-day Georgia. The Mississippian culture way of life, described by de Soto in 1540, had completely disappeared by the mid-1600s. The people may have suffered from new infectious diseases carried by the Europeans. Remaining peoples are believed to have coalesced as the documented historic tribes. . English fur traders from the Province of Carolina first encountered the

Creek people The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language), are a group of related indigenous (Native American) peoples of the Southeastern WoodlandsOcmulgee. There they traded iron tools, guns, cloth, and rum for deerskins and Indian slaves, captured by warring tribes in regular raids.

British colony

The conflict between Spain and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

over control of Georgia began in earnest in about 1670, when the English colony of

South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

was founded just north of the missionary provinces of

and

Mocama The Mocama were a Native American people who lived in the coastal areas of what are now northern Florida and southeastern Georgia. A Timucua group, they spoke the dialect known as Mocama, the best-attested dialect of the Timucua language. Their t ...

, part of Spanish Florida. Guale and Mocama, today part of Georgia, lay between Carolina's capital, Charles Town, and Spanish Florida's capital, ''San Agustín''. They were subjected to repeated military invasions by English and Spanish colonists. The English destroyed the Spanish mission system in Georgia by 1704. The coast of future Georgia was occupied by British-allied

American Indians until they were decimated in the

Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...

of 1715–1717, by South Carolina colonists and Indian allies. The surviving Yamasee fled to Spanish Florida, leaving the coast of Georgia depopulated. This enabled formation of a new British colony. A few defeated Yamasee remained and later became known as the

Yamacraw The Yamacraw were a Native American band that emerged in the early 18th century, occupying parts of what became Georgia, specifically along the bluffs near the mouth of the Savannah River where it enters the Atlantic Ocean. They were made up of ...

English settlement began in the early 1730s after

, a Member of

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

, proposed that the area be colonized with the "worthy poor" of England, to provide an alternative to the overcrowded debtors' prisons of the period. Oglethorpe and other English

philanthropists Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

secured a

royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...

as the Trustees of the colony of

on June 9, 1732. The misconception of Georgia's having been founded as a debtor or penal colony persists because numerous English convicts were later sentenced to transportation to Georgia as punishment, with the idea that they would provide labor. With the motto, "Not for ourselves, but for others," the Trustees selected colonists for Georgia. Oglethorpe and the Trustees formulated a contract, multi-tiered plan for the settlement of Georgia (see the

Oglethorpe Plan The Oglethorpe Plan is an urban planning idea that was most notably used in Savannah, Georgia, one of the Thirteen Colonies, in the 18th century. The plan uses a distinctive street network with repeating squares of residential blocks, commercial ...

). The plan framed a system of "agrarian equality" designed to support and perpetuate an economy based on family farming and to prevent the social disintegration they associated with unregulated urbanization. Land ownership was limited to , a grant that included a town lot, a garden plot near town, and a farm. Self-supporting colonists were able to obtain larger grants, but such grants were structured in increments tied to "headrights", that is, the number of

indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...

for whom the grantee paid transportation to the colony. Survivors who completed their term of indenture (to pay for the transportation and associated costs), would be granted a parcel of land of their own. No person was permitted to acquire additional land through purchase or inheritance. On February 12, 1733, the first settlers arrived in the ship ''Anne'', at what was to become the city of Savannah. In 1742, the colony was invaded by Spanish forces during the

War of Jenkins' Ear The War of Jenkins' Ear, or , was a conflict lasting from 1739 to 1748 between Britain and the Spanish Empire. The majority of the fighting took place in New Granada and the Caribbean Sea, with major operations largely ended by 1742. It is con ...

. Oglethorpe mobilized local forces and defeated the Spanish at the

Battle of Bloody Marsh The Battle of Bloody Marsh took place on 7 July 1742 between Spanish and British forces on St. Simons Island, part of the Province of Georgia, resulting in a victory for the British. Part of the War of Jenkins' Ear, the battle was for the Brit ...

. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war, confirmed the English position in Georgia. From 1735 to 1750, the trustees of Georgia, unique among Britain's American colonies, prohibited African slavery as a matter of public policy. However, as the growing wealth of the slave-based plantation economy in neighboring

demonstrated, slaves were more profitable than other forms of labor available to colonists. In addition, improving economic conditions in Europe meant that fewer whites were willing to immigrate as indentured servants. In addition, many of the whites suffered high mortality rates from the climate, tropical diseases and other hardships of the Lowcountry. In 1749, the state overturned its ban on slavery. From 1750 to 1775, planters so rapidly imported slaves that the enslaved population grew from less than 500 to approximately 18,000, and they constituted a majority of people in the colony. Some historians have suggested that Africans from rice-growing regions had sophisticated knowledge and material techniques to build the elaborate earthworks of dams, banks, and irrigation systems throughout the Lowcountry that supported rice and

indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...

cultivation. Georgia planters imported slaves chiefly from the rice-growing regions of present-day

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

the Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...

and

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

. Some recent scholarship argues that the Europeans could have developed the rice culture on their own and that African knowledge played a minor role in the success of its cultivation as a commodity crop. Later planters added sugar cane as a crop. A scarcity of horses proved to be a constant problem as the colonists tried to develop production of the industry of range cattle. Planters were occasionally able to arrange roundups of wild horses, believed to have escaped from Indian traders or from Spanish Florida. In 1752, Georgia became a royal colony. Planters from South Carolina, wealthier than the original settlers of Georgia, migrated south and soon dominated the colony. They replicated the customs and institutions of the

South Carolina Lowcountry The Lowcountry (sometimes Low Country or just low country) is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. The region includes significant salt marshes and other coastal waterways, making it an impor ...

. Planters had higher rates of absenteeism from their large plantations in the Lowcountry and the Sea Islands than did those in the Upper South. They often took their families to the hills during the summer, the "sick season", when the Lowcountry had high rates of disease carried by mosquitoes, such as

malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...

and

yellow fever Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. ...

. The decade after the end of Trustee rule was a decade of significant growth. Georgia began to grow after the treaty of 1748 ended fear of further attacks from Spain. By the 1750s, British settlers lived as far south as

Cumberland Island Cumberland Island, in the southeastern United States, is the largest of the Sea Islands of Georgia. The long-staple Sea Island cotton was first grown here by a local family, the Millers, who helped Eli Whitney develop the cotton gin. With its ...

. This violated the boundaries set by their own government and Spain, which claimed the territory. British settlers living south of the

Altamaha River The Altamaha River is a major river in the U.S. state of Georgia. It flows generally eastward for 137 miles (220 km) from its origin at the confluence of the Oconee River and Ocmulgee River towards the Atlantic Ocean, where it empt ...

frequently engaged in trade with Spanish Florida, which was also illegal according to both governments. Such a ban was essentially unenforceable. Because of the development of large plantations and commodity crops that required numerous slaves for cultivation and processing, the society of the Georgia coast was more like that of such British colonies as Barbados and Jamaica, than of

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. The large plantations were worked by numerous African-born slaves. Many of these Africans, although of different languages and tribes, came from closely related geographic areas of West Africa. The slaves of the 'Rice Coast' of South Carolina and Georgia developed the unique

Gullah The Gullah () are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and cultu ...

or Geechee culture (the latter term was more common in Georgia), in which important parts of West African linguistic, religious and cultural heritage were preserved and creolized. This multi-ethnic culture developed throughout the Lowcountry and Sea Islands, where enslaved African Americans later worked at cotton plantations. African-American influences, which also absorbed elements of Native American and European-American culture, was strong on the cuisine and music that became integral parts of southern culture. Georgia was largely untouched by war during much of Britain's involvement in the Seven Years' War. In North America, hostilities took place along a front in the North, along the border with New France and their allied Native American tribes. Americans later called it the French and Indian War. In 1762 Georgia feared a potential Spanish invasion from Florida, although this did not occur by the time peace was signed at the 1763

Treaty of Paris Treaty of Paris may refer to one of many treaties signed in Paris, France: Treaties 1200s and 1300s * Treaty of Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian Crusade * Treaty of Paris (1259), between Henry III of England and Louis IX of France * Trea ...

. During this period the

Anglo-Cherokee War The Anglo-Cherokee War (1758–1761; in the Cherokee language: the ''"war with those in the red coats"'' or ''"War with the English"''), was also known from the Anglo-European perspective as the Cherokee War, the Cherokee Uprising, or the Cherok ...

began. Governor James Wright wrote in 1766, thirty-two years after its founding, that Georgia had

No manufactures of the least consequence: a trifling quantity of coarse homespun cloth, wool icand cotton mixed; amongst the poorer sort of people, for their own use, a few cotton and yarn stockings; shoes for our Negroes; and some occasional blacksmith's work. But all our supplies of silk, linens, wool, shoes, stockings, nails, locks, hinges, and tools of every sort ... are all imported from and through Great Britain.

Capitals of Georgia

Georgia has had five different capitals in its history. The first was Savannah, the seat of government during

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

colonial rule, followed by Augusta,

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

, Milledgeville, and

, the capital city from 1868 to the present day. The state legislature has gathered for official meetings in other places, most often in Macon and especially during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

American Revolution

Royal governor James Wright was popular. But all of the 13 colonies developed the same strong position defending the traditional rights of Englishmen which they feared London was violating. Georgia and the others moved rapidly toward

republicanism Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasises the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It ...

which rejected monarchy, aristocracy and corruption, and demanded government based on the will of the people. In particular, they demanded "

No taxation without representation "No taxation without representation" is a political slogan that originated in the American Revolution, and which expressed one of the primary grievances of the American colonists for Great Britain. In short, many colonists believed that as they ...

" and rejected the Stamp Act in 1765 and all subsequent royal taxes. More fearsome was the British punishment of Boston after the

Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell t ...

. Georgians knew their remote coastal location made them vulnerable. In August 1774 at a general meeting in Savannah, the people proclaimed, "Protection and allegiance are reciprocal, and under the British Constitution correlative terms; ... the Constitution admits of no taxation without representation." Georgia had few grievances of its own but ideologically supported the patriot cause and expelled the British. Angered by the news of the battle of Concord, on the eleventh of May 1775, the patriots stormed the royal magazine at Savannah and carried off its ammunition. The customary celebration of the King's birthday on June 4 was turned into a wild demonstration against the King; a liberty pole was erected. Within a month the patriots completely defied royal authority and set up their own government. In June and July, assemblies at Savannah chose a Council of Safety and a Provincial Congress to take control of the government and cooperate with the other colonies. They started raising troops and prepared for war. "In short my lord," wrote Wright to

Lord Dartmouth Earl of Dartmouth is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1711 for William Legge, 2nd Baron Dartmouth. History The Legge family descended from Edward Legge, Vice-President of Munster. His eldest son William Legge was ...

on September 16, 1775, "the whole Executive Power is Assumed by them, and the King's Governor remains little Else than Nominally so." In February 1776, Wright fled to a British warship and the patriots controlled all of Georgia. The new Congress adopted "Rules and Regulations" on April 15, 1776, which can be considered the Constitution of 1776. (Along with the other American colonies, Georgia declared independence in 1776 when its delegates approved and signed the joint Declaration of Independence.) With that declaration, Georgia ceased to be a colony. It was a state with a weak chief executive, the "President and Commander-in-Chief," who was elected by the state Congress for a term of only six months.

Archibald Bulloch Archibald Stobo Bulloch (January 1, 1730 – February 22, 1777) was a lawyer, soldier, and statesman from Georgia during the American Revolution. He was the first governor of Georgia. He was also a great-grandfather of Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, ...

, President of the two previous Congresses, was elected first President. He bent his efforts to mobilizing and training the militia. The Constitution of 1777 put power in the hands of the elected House of Assembly, which chose the governor; there was no senate and the franchise was open to nearly all white men. The new state's exposed seaboard position made it a tempting target for the British Navy. Savannah was captured by British and Loyalist forces in 1778, along with some of its hinterland. Enslaved Africans and African Americans chose their independence by escaping to British lines, where they were promised freedom. About one-third of Georgia's 15,000 slaves escaped during the Revolution. The patriots moved to Augusta. At the

Siege of Savannah The siege of Savannah or the Second Battle of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) in 1779. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia, had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutena ...

in 1779, American and French troops (the latter including a company of free men of color from Saint-Domingue, who were

mixed race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...

) fought unsuccessfully to retake the city. During the final years of the American Revolution, Georgia had a functioning Loyalist colonial government along the coast. Together with New York City, it was the last Loyalist bastion. An early historian reported:

For forty-two long months had she been a prey to rapine, oppression, fratricidal strife, and poverty. Fear, unrest, the brand, the sword, the tomahawk, had been her portion. In the abstraction emovalof negro slaves, by the burning of dwellings, in the obliteration of plantations, by the destruction of agricultural implements, and by theft of domestic animals and personal effects, it is estimated that at least one half of the available property of the inhabitants had, during this period, been completely swept away. Real estate had depreciated in value. Agriculture was at a stand-still, and there was no money with which to repair these losses and inaugurate a new era of prosperity. The lamentation of widows and orphans, too, were heard in the land. These not only bemoaned their dead, but cried aloud for food. Amid the general depression there was, nevertheless, a deal of gladness in the hearts of the people, a radiant joy, an inspiring hope. Independence had been won.

The end of the war saw a new wave of migration to the state, particularly from the frontiers of Virginia and the Carolinas. George Mathews, soon to be governor of Georgia, was instrumental in this migration. Georgia ratified the U.S. Constitution on January 2, 1788. Parishes of Georgia, 1765

The original eight counties of Georgia were

Burke Burke is an Anglo-Norman Irish surname, deriving from the ancient Anglo-Norman and Hiberno-Norman noble dynasty, the House of Burgh. In Ireland, the descendants of William de Burgh (–1206) had the surname ''de Burgh'' which was gaelicised ...

, Camden,

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

, Effingham,

Glynn Glynn () is a small village and civil parish in the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies a short distance south of Larne, on the shore of Larne Lough. Glynn had a population of 2,027 people in th ...

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

and Wilkes. Before these counties were created in 1777, Georgia had been divided into local government units called parishes. Each of these original eight counties is named after members of the British government who had supported the American cause during the revolution. As with South Carolina, most of the Loyalists in Georgia (Georgians who had fought for the British cause during the revolution) stayed in Georgia after the war ended. Leading Georgia patriots such as Archibald Bulloch, Stephen Heard, Lyman Hall, John Houstoun, Samuel Elbert, Edward Telfair and George Mathews were all instrumental in both encouraging the Loyalists to stay and in making sure that they were not mistreated during the peace that followed the war. Screven County had hundreds of first generation Scottish immigrants who had all stayed loyal to the crown during the war, Telfair and Mathews personally asked them to stay. In the city of Savannah, Archibald Bulloch, Stephen Heard, Lyman Hall and John Houstoun all made personal appeals to the loyalists to "stay on" after the war ended and make the best of their lives under the new republican form of government.

Antebellum period

During the 77 years of the

Antebellum period In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by ...

, the area of Georgia was soon reduced by half from the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

back to the current state line by 1802. The ceded land was added into the Mississippi Territory by 1804, following the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...

, with the state of Alabama later created in 1819 to become the west Georgia state line. Also during this period, large cotton plantations dominated the inland areas, while rice farming was popular near the coast. The slave population increased to work the plantations, but the native Cherokee tribe was removed and resettled west in Oklahoma, in the final two decades before the Civil War, as explained further in the paragraphs below.

Reduced state lines

In 1787, the

Treaty of Beaufort The Treaty of Beaufort, also called the Beaufort Convention, is the treaty that originally set the all-river boundary between the U.S. states of Georgia and South Carolina. It was named for Beaufort, South Carolina, where it was signed in 1787. ...

had established the eastern boundary of Georgia, from the Atlantic seashore up the Savannah River, at South Carolina, to modern day Tugalo Lake (construction to the Tugalo dam was started in 1917 and completed in 1923). Twelve to fourteen miles () of land (inhabited at the time by the Cherokee Nation) separate the lake from the southern boundary of North Carolina. South Carolina ceded its claim to this land (extending all the way to the Pacific Ocean) to the federal government. Georgia maintained a claim on western land from 31° N to 35° N, the southern part of which overlapped with the Mississippi Territory created from part of Spanish Florida in 1798. Following a series of land scandals, Georgia ceded its claims in 1802, fixing its present western boundary. In 1804, the federal government added the cession to the Mississippi Territory. The Treaty of 1816 fixed the present-day northern boundary between Georgia and South Carolina at the

Chattooga River The Chattooga River (also spelled Chatooga, Chatuga, and Chautaga, variant name Guinekelokee River) is the main tributary of the Tugaloo River. Water course The headwaters of the Chattooga River are located southwest of Cashiers, North Carol ...

, proceeding northwest from the lake. The Mississippi Territory was split on December 10, 1817, to form the U.S. state of

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

and the

Alabama Territory The Territory of Alabama (sometimes Alabama Territory) was an organized incorporated territory of the United States. The Alabama Territory was carved from the Mississippi Territory on August 15, 1817 and lasted until December 14, 1819, when it ...

for 2 years; then in December 1819, the new state of

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...

became the western boundary of Georgia.

Indian relocation

After the Creek War (corresponding with the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States, United States of America and its Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom ...

), some

Muscogee The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language), are a group of related indigenous (Native American) peoples of the Southeastern WoodlandsTreaty of Fort Jackson The Treaty of Fort Jackson (also known as the Treaty with the Creeks, 1814) was signed on August 9, 1814 at Fort Jackson near Wetumpka, Alabama following the defeat of the Red Stick (Upper Creek) resistance by United States allied forces at ...

. Under this treaty, General

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

forced the Creek confederacy to surrender more than 21 million acres in what is now southern

and central Alabama. On February 12, 1825,

William McIntosh William McIntosh (1775 – April 30, 1825),Hoxie, Frederick (1996)pp. 367-369/ref> was also commonly known as ''Tustunnuggee Hutke'' (White Warrior), was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Creek Nation between the turn of the nineteenth cen ...

and other chiefs signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, which gave up most of the remaining Creek lands in Georgia. After the

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

ratified the treaty, McIntosh was assassinated on April 30, 1825, by Creeks led by Menawa. In 1829, gold was discovered in the north Georgia mountains, resulting in the

Georgia Gold Rush The Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States and the first in Georgia, and overshadowed the previous rush in North Carolina. It started in 1829 in present-day Lumpkin County near the county seat, Dahlonega, an ...

, the second

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

in U.S. history. A federal mint was established in

Dahlonega, Georgia The city of Dahlonega () is the county seat of Lumpkin County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 5,242, and in 2018 the population was estimated to be 6,884. Dahlonega is located at the north end of ...

, and continued to operate until 1861. During the early 1800s,

Indians owned their ancestral land, operated their own government with a written constitution, and did not recognize the authority of the state of Georgia. An influx of white settlers pressured the U.S. government to expel them. The dispute culminated in the

Indian Removal Act The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for ...

of 1830, under which all eastern tribes were sent west to

Indian reservations An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...

in present-day Oklahoma. In Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court in 1832 ruled that states were not permitted to redraw the boundaries of Indian lands, but President

and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. Escalating tensions with Creek tribes erupted into open war with the United States following the destruction of the village of Roanoke, Georgia, located along the Chattahoochee River on the boundary between Creek and American territory, in May 1836. During the so-called "

Creek War of 1836 The Creek War of 1836, also known as the Second Creek War or Creek Alabama Uprising, was a conflict in Alabama at the time of Indian Removal between the Muscogee Creek people and non-native land speculators and squatters. Although the Creek ...

Secretary of War The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ...

Lewis Cass dispatched General

Winfield Scott Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786May 29, 1866) was an American military commander and political candidate. He served as a general in the United States Army from 1814 to 1861, taking part in the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, the early s ...

to end the violence by forcibly removing the Creeks to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. In 1838, Andrew Jackson's successor, President

Martin van Buren Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he ...

dispatched federal troops to round up the Cherokee and deport them west of the

. This forced relocation, beginning in White County, became known as the

Trail of Tears The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the " Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, ...

and led to the death of over 4,000 Cherokees.

Land allocations

In 1794, Eli Whitney, a

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

-born artisan residing in

Savannah, Georgia Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later t ...

, had patented a cotton gin, mechanizing the separation of cotton fibres from their seeds. The

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

had resulted in the mechanized spinning and weaving of cloth in the world's first factories in the north of England. Fueled by the soaring demands of British textile manufacturers,

King Cotton "King Cotton" is a slogan that summarized the strategy used before the American Civil War (of 1861–1865) by secessionists in the southern states (the future Confederate States of America) to claim the feasibility of secession and to prove ther ...

quickly came to dominate Georgia and the other southern states. Although

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

had banned the slave trade in 1808, Georgia's slave population continued to grow with the importation of slaves from the plantations of the

and

Chesapeake Chesapeake often refers to: *Chesapeake people, a Native American tribe also known as the Chesepian * The Chesapeake, a.k.a. Chesapeake Bay *Delmarva Peninsula, also known as the Chesapeake Peninsula Chesapeake may also refer to: Populated plac ...

Tidewater, increasing from 149,656 in 1820 to 280,944 in 1840. A small population of free blacks developed, mostly working as artisans. The Georgia legislature unanimously passed a resolution in 1842 declaring that free blacks were not U.S. citizens. However, national citizenship is defined by federal statute. While an indication of sentiment, this state resolution did not have the power of law. Slaves worked the fields in large cotton

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

s, and the economy of the state became dependent on the institution of slavery. Requiring little cultivation, most efficiently grown on large plantations by large (slave) workforces, and easy to transport, cotton proved ideally suited to the inland frontier. The lower

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

or ' Black Belt' counties – comprising the middle third of the state and initially named for the region's distinctively dark and fertile soil – became the site of the largest and most productive cotton plantations. By 1860, the slave population in the Black Belt was three times greater than that of the coastal counties, where rice remained the principal crop. The upper

was settled mainly by white yeoman farmers of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

descent. While there were also many smaller cotton plantations, the proportion of slaves was lower in north Georgia than in the

coastal The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in ...

and Black Belt counties, but it still ranged up to 25% of the population. In 1860 in the state as a whole, enslaved African Americans comprised 44% of the population of slightly more than one million.

Education

Until the 20th century, there were no public secondary schools, although there were several private and religious schools. Post-secondary education was formalized in 1785, with the establishment of the

, the first university in the U.S. to gain a state charter. Rural families often pooled their resources to hire itinerant teachers for a month or two at a time. Ten grammar schools were in operation by 1770, many taught by ministers. Most had some government funding, and many were free to both male and female white students. A study of women's signatures indicates a high degree of literacy in areas with schools. Georgia's early promise in education faded after 1800. Public education was established by the Reconstruction era legislatures in the South, but after Democrats regained power, they hardly funded them. The entire rural South had limited public schooling until after 1900, and black schools were underfunded in the segregated society. Wealthy Georgians took care of their own, sending their children to private academies. The Presbyterians were especially active in creating academies, including numerous schools for women. They included Georgia Female College, Rome Female College, Greensboro Female College, Griffin Synodical Female College, Thomasville/Young's Female College, and the most enduring of all, Decatur Female Seminary, now Agnes Scott College.

Civil War

Recto Bank of the State of Georgia 25 cents 1861 urn-3 HBS

On January 19, 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union, keeping the name "State of Georgia" and joining the newly formed Confederacy in February. White solidarity was strong in 1861–63, as the planters in the Black Belt formed a common cause with upcountry yeomen farmers in defense of the Confederacy against the Union. Around 120,000 Georgians served in the Confederate Army. However disillusionment set in by 1863, with class tensions becoming more serious, including food riots, desertions, and growing Unionist activity in the northern mountain region. Approximately 5,000 Georgians (both black and white troops) served in the

in units including the 1st Georgia Infantry Battalion, the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, and a number of East Tennessean regiments. Governor

Joseph E. Brown Joseph Emerson Brown (April 15, 1821 – November 30, 1894), often referred to as Joe Brown, was an American attorney and politician, serving as the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, the only governor to serve four terms. He also se ...

tried to divert attention by blaming the Confederate officials in Richmond, especially President Jefferson Davis, and insisting that many Georgia troops be kept at home. Brown was by the Augusta ''Chronicle and Sentinel,'' an influential weekly newspaper that repeatedly attacked the Davis administration, especially after the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus on February 15, 1864.

Military history

Georgia sent one hundred twenty thousand soldiers to the Confederacy, mostly to the armies in Virginia. Savannah Campaign

The first major battle in Georgia was a Confederate victory at the

in 1863. It was the last major Confederate victory in the west. Following President

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, slaves began to leave plantations to join Union lines and gain freedom. In 1864,

William T. Sherman William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign. Confederate general

Joseph E. Johnston Joseph Eggleston Johnston (February 3, 1807 – March 21, 1891) was an American career army officer, serving with distinction in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) and the Seminole Wars. After Virginia secede ...

fought a series of delaying battles, the largest being the

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain was fought on June 27, 1864, during the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War. It was the most significant frontal assault launched by Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman against the Confederate Army of Tenne ...

, as he tried to delay as long as possible retreating toward Atlanta. Johnston's replacement, Gen.

John Bell Hood John Bell Hood (June 1 or June 29, 1831 – August 30, 1879) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Although brave, Hood's impetuosity led to high losses among his troops as he moved up in rank. Bruce Catton wrote that "the de ...

attempted several unsuccessful counterattacks at the

Battle of Peachtree Creek The Battle of Peachtree Creek was fought in Georgia on July 20, 1864, as part of the Atlanta Campaign in the American Civil War. It was the first major attack by Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood since taking command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee ...

and the

Battle of Atlanta The Battle of Atlanta was a battle of the Atlanta Campaign fought during the American Civil War on July 22, 1864, just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia. Continuing their summer campaign to seize the important rail and supply hub of Atlanta, Un ...

, but Sherman captured the city on September 2, 1864. In November Sherman stripped his army of non-essentials and began his famous

, living off the land and burning plantations, wrecking railroads, and killing the livestock. Thousands of escaped slaves followed his troops across the region as he entered Savannah on December 22. After the loss of Atlanta, the governor withdrew the state's militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army. They did not try to stop Sherman. Sherman's March was devastating to Georgia and the Confederacy in terms of economics and psychology. Sherman estimated that the campaign had inflicted $100 million (about $1.4 billion in 2010 dollars) in destruction, about one fifth of which "inured to our advantage" while the "remainder is simple waste and destruction." His army wrecked of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. Sherman's campaign of

total war Total war is a type of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combata ...

extended to Georgia civilians. In July 1864, during the Atlanta campaign, General Sherman ordered approximately 400 Roswell mill workers, mostly women, arrested as traitors and shipped as prisoners to the North with their children. This was a common tactic of Sherman to economically disrupt the South. There is little evidence that more than a few of the women ever returned home. The memory of Sherman's March became iconic and central to the " Myth of the Lost Cause." The crisis was the setting for

Margaret Mitchell Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel '' Gone with the Wind'', for which she wo ...

's 1936 novel ''

Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind may also refer to: Music * ''Gone with the Wind'' ...

'' and the subsequent 1939 film. Most important were many "salvation stories" that tell not what Union soldiers destroyed, but what was saved by the quick thinking and crafty women on the home front, loyal slaves, or was preserved due to a Northerner's appreciation of the beauty of homes and the charm of Southern women.

Food shortages

By summer 1861, the Union naval blockade virtually shut down the export of cotton and the import of manufactured goods. Food that formerly came overland was cut off. In response, the governor and legislature pleaded with planters to grow less cotton and more food. Most refused, some believing that the Yankees would not or could not fight. When cotton prices soared in Europe, expectations were that Europe would soon intervene to break the blockade. Neither proved true and the myth of omnipotent "

" died hard. The legislature imposed cotton quotas, making it a crime to grow an excess. But food shortages only worsened, especially in the towns. Poor white women raised more than two dozen riots when they raided stores and captured supply wagons to get such necessities as bacon, corn, flour, and cotton yarn. As the South lost control of more and more of its major ocean and river ports, it had to rely on a rickety railroad system and unimproved roads to move soldiers and supplies. Atlanta became the Confederacy's chief rail center, thus making it a prime target for Sherman. Thinking the state was safe from invasion, the Confederates built small munitions factories throughout the state as well as soldier hospitals and prison camps.

Andersonville Prison

In 1864, the government relocated Union prisoners of war from Richmond, Virginia, to the town of Andersonville, in remote southwest Georgia. It proved a death camp because of overcrowding and a severe lack of supplies, food, water, and medicine. During its 15 months of operation, the Andersonville prison camp held 45,000 Union soldiers; at least 13,000 died from disease, malnutrition, starvation, or exposure. At its peak, the death rate was more than 100 persons per day. After the war, the camp's commanding officer, Captain

Henry Wirz Henry Wirz (born Hartmann Heinrich Wirz, November 25, 1823 – November 10, 1865) was a Swiss-American officer of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was the commandant of the stockade of Camp Sumter, a Confederate pri ...

, was the only Confederate to be tried and executed as a war criminal.

Reconstruction

At war's end the devastation and disruption in every part of the state was dramatic. Wartime damage, disruption to plantations, and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production before the end of the war. Production of the state's chief money crop, cotton, fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865, while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager.New Georgia Encyclopedia: Reconstruction in Georgia
/ref> After the war, the state subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines to improve infrastructure and connections to markets. Use of commercial fertilizers increased cotton production in Georgia's upcountry, but the coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war. In January 1865,

issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate abandoned plantations in the

Sea Islands The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the Southeastern United States. Numbering over 100, they are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of South Caroli ...

and redistribute land in smaller plots to former slaves. Later that year, after succeeding Lincoln in the presidency after he was assassinated, Andrew Johnson revoked the order and returned the plantations to their former owners. At the beginning of the period of

, Georgia had more than 460,000

. Slaves made up 44% of the state's population in 1860. After the Civil War, many former slaves moved from rural areas to Atlanta, where economic opportunities were better. Free from white supervision, they established their own communities. Other migrations involved blacks moving from plantations to adjacent small towns and communities. A new federal agency the Freedmen's Bureau helped blacks negotiate labor contracts, and set up schools and churches. The region's planters struggled with the transition to paid labor and tried to control the movement of blacks through Black Codes. Andrew Johnson's decision to restore the former Confederate states to the Union, without requirements for political change, was criticized by

Radical Republicans The Radical Republicans (later also known as "Stalwarts") were a faction within the Republican Party, originating from the party's founding in 1854, some 6 years before the Civil War, until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Recons ...

in Congress. In March 1867, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act to place the South under military occupation and rule. Along with

and Florida, Georgia was included in the

Third Military District The Third Military District of the U.S. Army was one of five temporary administrative units of the U.S. War Department that existed in the American South. The district was stipulated by the Reconstruction Acts during the Reconstruction period fo ...

, under the command of General John Pope. Military rule lasted less than a year. It supervised the first elections in which black men could vote. The electoral roll in 1867 included 102,000 eligible white men, and 99,000 eligible black men. Radical Republicans in Congress required ex-Confederates to take an ironclad oath of loyalty or be prevented from holding office. The legislature was controlled by a biracial coalition of newly enfranchised

, Northerners (

carpetbaggers In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical term used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, who were perceived to be exploiting the l ...

), and white Southerners (disparagingly called

scalawags In United States history, the term scalawag (sometimes spelled scallawag or scallywag) referred to white Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts after the conclusion of the American Civil War. As with the term '' carpet ...

). The latter were mostly former Whigs who had opposed secession. The voters elected delegates to write a new constitution in 1868; 20% of the delegates were black. In July 1868, the newly elected General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment; a Republican governor,

Rufus Bullock Rufus Brown Bullock (March 28, 1834 – April 27, 1907) was a Republican Party politician and businessman in Georgia. During the Reconstruction Era he served as the state's governor and called for equal economic opportunity and political rights f ...

, was inaugurated, and Georgia was readmitted to the Union. The state's Democrats, including former Confederate leaders

Robert Toombs Robert Augustus Toombs (July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885) was an American politician from Georgia, who was an important figure in the formation of the Confederacy. From a privileged background as a wealthy planter and slaveholder, Toomb ...

and

Howell Cobb Howell Cobb (September 7, 1815 – October 9, 1868) was an American and later Confederate political figure. A southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and the speaker of the House from 184 ...

, convened in Atlanta to denounce Reconstruction. Theirs was described as the largest mass rally held in Georgia. In September, white Republicans joined with the Democrats in expelling all thirty-two black legislators from the General Assembly. Refusing to give up social domination, some ex-Confederates organized insurgent paramilitary groups, especially chapters of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan. Freedmen's Bureau agents reported 336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill perpetrated against freedmen across the state from January 1 through November 15, 1868. In 1868, under Reconstruction, Georgia became the first state in the South to implement the

convict lease Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor which was practiced historically in the Southern United States, the laborers being mainly African-American men; it was ended during the 20th century. (Convict labor in general continues; f ...

system. It generated revenue for the state by leasing out the prison population, many of whom were black, to work for private businesses and citizens. Prisoners did not receive income for their labor. In this manner, railroad companies, mines, turpentine distilleries and other manufacturers supplemented their workforce with unpaid convict labor. This helped to hasten Georgia's transition to industrialization. Under the convict release system, employers were legally obliged to provide humane treatment to the laborers. But the system was easily abused and akin to slavery. One prominent beneficiary of this system was the Republican jurist and politician

, whose railroads, coal mines and iron works supplemented their workforce with convict labor. The activity of political groups opposed to Reconstruction prompted Republicans and others to call for the return of Georgia to military rule. Georgia was one of only two ex-Confederate states to vote against

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

in the presidential election of 1868. In March 1869, the state legislature defeated ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. That same month, the U.S. Congress, citing election fraud, barred Georgia's representatives from taking their seats. This culminated in military rule being re-imposed in December 1869. In January 1870, Gen.

Alfred H. Terry Alfred Howe Terry (November 10, 1827 – December 16, 1890) was a Union army, Union Major general (United States), general in the American Civil War and the military commander of the Dakota Territory from 1866 to 1869, and again from 1872 to 18 ...

, the final commanding general of the Third District, purged the General Assembly of ex-Confederates. He replaced them with Republican runners-up and reinstated expelled black legislators. This militarily imposed General Assembly had a large Republican majority. In February 1870, the newly constituted legislature ratified the Fifteenth Amendment and chose new Senators to send to Washington. On July 15, Georgia became the last former Confederate state readmitted into the Union. After military rule ended, Democrats won commanding majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, aided by election violence and fraud. Some Reconstruction-era black legislators held on to their seats through the legislature's passage of laws disfranchising blacks, starting with a poll tax in 1877; the last black legislator served until 1907. In 1908 provisions of a new constitution completed black disfranchisement. Under threat of impeachment, Republican governor

fled the state.

Postbellum economic growth

Under the Reconstruction government, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to the inland rail terminus of

. Construction began on a new capitol building, which was completed by 1889. With the city a center of trade and government, the population of Atlanta increased rapidly.

Post-Reconstruction The nadir of American race relations was the period in African American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century when racism in the country, especially racism against A ...

Georgia was dominated by the

Bourbon Triumvirate The Bourbon Triumvirate refers to three powerful and influential Georgia politicians, all members of the Democratic Party, in the post- Reconstruction Era: Joseph E. Brown, Alfred H. Colquitt, and John Brown Gordon. The three men occupied pos ...

, Major General John B. Gordon and Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt. Between 1872 and 1890, either Brown or Gordon held one of Georgia's Senate seats, Colquitt held the other, and, in the major part of that period, either Colquitt or Gordon occupied the Governor's office. Democrats effectively monopolized state politics. Colquitt represented the old planter class; Brown, head of

Western & Atlantic Railroad The Western & Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia (W&A) is a railroad owned by the State of Georgia and currently leased by CSX, which CSX operates in the Southeastern United States from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was fo ...

and one of the states first millionaires, represented the

New South New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War. Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the ...

businessmen. Gordon was neither a planter nor a successful businessman, but the former Confederate General proved a most skilled politician. Gordon was thought by some to be the titular leader of the 1st Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. He was the first former Confederate to serve in the U.S. Senate. He helped negotiate the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and led to the end of federal enforcement of laws protecting blacks. A native of northwest Georgia, his popularity impeded the growth of the 'mountain Republicanism,' which was prevalent elsewhere in Appalachian areas where slavery had been minor and resentment against the planter class widespread. During the

Gilded Age In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1900, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Wes ...

, Georgia slowly recovered from the devastation of the Civil War. One of the most enduring products came about in reaction to the age's excesses. In 1885, when Atlanta and

Fulton County Fulton County is the name of eight counties in the United States of America. Most are named for Robert Fulton, inventor of the first practical steamboat: *Fulton County, Arkansas, named after Governor William Savin Fulton *Fulton County, Georgia *F ...

enacted

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...

legislation against alcohol, a local pharmacist,

John Pemberton John Stith Pemberton (July 8, 1831 – August 16, 1888) was an American pharmacist and Confederate States Army veteran who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later bec ...

invented a new soda drink. Two years later, after he sold the drink to

Asa Candler Asa Griggs Candler (December 30, 1851 – March 12, 1929) was an American business tycoon and politician who in 1888 purchased the Coca-Cola recipe for $238.98 from chemist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. Candler founded The Coca-C ...

who promoted it,

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlant ...

became the state's most famous product. Henry W. Grady, editor of the ''

Atlanta Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...

'', emerged as the leading spokesman of the '

'. He promoted sectional reconciliation and the region's place in a rapidly industrializing nation. The International Cotton Exposition of 1881 and the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 were staged to promote Georgia and the South as textile centers. They attracted mills from New England to build a new economic base in the post-war South by diversifying the region's agrarian economies. Attracted by low labor costs and the proximity to raw materials, new textile businesses transformed

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

and

, as well as Graniteville, on the Georgia-

border, into textile manufacturing centers. Due to Georgia's relatively untapped virgin forests, particularly in the thinly populated pine savanna of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, logging became a major industry. It supported other new industries, most notably paper mills and

turpentine Turpentine (which is also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, terebenthene, terebinthine and (colloquially) turps) is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines. Mainly used as a spec ...

distilling, which, by 1900, made Georgia the leading producer of

naval stores Naval stores are all liquid products derived from conifers. These materials include rosin, tall oil, pine oil, and terpentine. The term ''naval stores'' originally applied to the organic compounds used in building and maintaining wooden sail ...

. Also important were coal, granite and

kaolin Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral ...

mining, the latter used in the manufacture of paper, bricks and ceramic piping. In the volatile 1880s and 1890s, political violence suppressed black voting as white Democrats imposed laws for Jim Crow and

white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

. Whites increased their lynchings of blacks, reaching its height in 1899, when 27 Georgians were killed by lynch mobs. From 1890 to 1900, Georgia averaged more than one mob killing per month. More than 95% of the victims of the 450 lynchings documented between 1882 and 1930 were black. E. M. Beck, Stewart E. Tolnay, and Chris Dobbs, "Lynching"
History and Archeology (1877–1900), New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2007–2017; accessed March 17, 2018 This period also corresponded to Georgia's

disfranchisement Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...

of blacks and many poor whites through changes to its constitution and addition of such requirements as poll taxes (1877), literacy and comprehension tests, and residency requirements. In 1900 blacks comprised 46.7% of the population, but hardly any could register and vote.Historical Census Browser, 1900 Federal Census, University of Virginia
, accessed March 15, 2008 The state instituted a

white primary White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. Statewide white primaries were established by the state Democratic Party units or by state legislatures in South C ...

in 1908; as it was a one-party state by that time, this further excluded the chance of black political participation. This situation prevailed into the mid-20th century. The Cotton States and International Exposition was the venue for

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...

's speech promoting what became known as the Atlanta Compromise. He urged blacks to focus their efforts, not on demands for social equality, but to improve their own conditions by becoming proficient in skills for available jobs in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic service. He proposed building a broad base within existing conditions in the South. He urged whites to take responsibility to improve social and economic relations between the races. Black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who supported classical academic standards for education, disagreed with Washington and said he was acquiescing to oppression. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois had earned his doctorate in Germany and was one of the most highly educated black men in America; in 1897 he joined the faculty of

Atlanta University Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Fou ...

and taught there for several years.

Agrarian unrest and disfranchisement

While Grady and other proponents of the

insisted on Georgia's urban future, the state's economy remained overwhelmingly dependent on cotton. Much of the industrialization that did occur was as a subsidiary of cotton agriculture; many of the state's new textile factories were devoted to the manufacture of simple cotton bags. The price per pound of cotton plummeted from $1 at the end of the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

to an average of 20 cents in the 1870s, nine cents in the 1880s, and seven cents in the 1890s. By 1898, it had fallen to five cents a pound -while costing seven cents to produce. Once-prosperous planters suffered significant hardship. Thousands of freedmen became tenant farmers or sharecroppers rather than hire out to labor gangs. Through the lien system, small-county merchants assumed a central role in cotton production, monopolizing the supply of equipment, fertilizers, seeds and foodstuffs needed to make sharecropping possible. By the 1890s, as cotton prices plummeted below production costs, 80–90% of cotton growers, whether owner or tenant, were in debt to lien merchants. Indebted Georgia cotton growers responded by embracing the "agrarian radicalism" manifested, successively, in the 1870s with the Granger movement, in the 1880s with the

Farmers' Alliance The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished ca. 1875. The movement included several parallel but independent political organizations — the National Farmers' Alliance and ...

, and in the 1890s with the Populist Party. In 1892, Congressman Tom Watson joined the Populists, becoming the most visible spokesman for their predominately Western Congressional delegation. Southern Populists denounced the convict lease system, while urging white and black small farmers to unite on the basis of shared economic self-interest. They generally refrained from advocating social equality. In his essay 'The Negro Question in the South,' Watson framed his appeal for a united front between black and white farmers declaring: "You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both." Southern Populists did not share their Western counterparts' emphasis on Free Silver and bitterly opposed their desire for fusion with the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

. They had faced death threats, mob violence and ballot-box stuffing to challenge the monopoly of their states'

Bourbon Democrat Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States in the later 19th century (1872–1904) to refer to members of the Democratic Party who were ideologically aligned with fiscal conservatism or classical liberalism, especially those who su ...

political machines. The merger with the Democratic Party in the 1896 Presidential election dealt a fatal blow to Southern Populism. The Populists nominated Watson as

William Jennings Bryan William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President ...

's vice-president, but Bryan selected

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

industrialist

Arthur Sewall Arthur Sewall (November 25, 1835 – September 5, 1900) was an American shipbuilder from Maine, best known as the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1896, running mate to William Jennings Bryan. From 1888 to 1896 he ser ...

as a concession to Democratic leaders. Watson was not reelected. As the Populist Party disintegrated, through his periodical ''The Jeffersonian'', Watson crusaded as an

anti-Catholic Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...

and (eventually) a white supremacist. He attacked the

socialism Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...

, which had attracted many former Populists. He campaigned with little success for the party's candidate for President in 1904 and 1908. Watson continued to exert influence in Georgia politics, and provided a key endorsement in the gubernatorial campaign of M. Hoke Smith.

Disenfranchisement and court challenges

A former cabinet member in

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

's administration, M. Hoke Smith broke with Cleveland because of his support for Bryan. Hoke Smith's tenure as governor was noted for the passage of

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

and the 1908 constitutional amendment that required a person to satisfy qualifications for literacy tests and property ownership for voting. Because a

grandfather clause A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...

was used to waive those requirements for most whites, the legislation effectively secured the

disenfranchisement Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...

of African Americans. Georgia's amendment was made following 1898 and 1903 Supreme Court decisions that had upheld similar provisions in the constitutions of Mississippi and Alabama. The new provisions were devastating for the African-American community and poor whites, as losing the ability to register to vote meant they were excluded from serving on juries or in local office, as well as losing all representation at local, state and Federal levels. In 1900 African Americans numbered 1,035,037 in Georgia, nearly 47% of the state's population. Litigation in Georgia and elsewhere brought some relief, as in the overturning of the grandfather clause in the US Supreme Court ruling, '' Guinn v. United States'' (1915). White-dominated state legislatures and the state Democratic parties quickly responded by creating new barriers to an expanded franchise, such as white-only primaries. The last black member of the General Assembly, W. H. Rogers, resigned in 1907 as the final representative of the Reconstruction-era coastal Georgia political machine.

Progressive era

The rapidly growing middle class of professionals, businessmen and educated, worked to bring the

Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...

to Georgia in the early 20th century. The goal was to modernize the state, increase efficiency, apply scientific methods, promote education and eliminate waste and corruption. Key leaders were governors

Joseph M. Terrell Joseph Meriwether Terrell (June 6, 1861November 17, 1912) was a United States Senate, United States Senator and the List of Governors of Georgia, 57th Governor of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. Background Born in Greenville, Georgia, Greenvill ...

(1902–07) and Hoke Smith. Terrell pushed through important legislation covering judicial affairs, schools, food and drug regulation, taxation and labor measures. He failed to obtain necessary penal and railroad reforms. A representative local leader was newspaper editor Thomas Lee Bailey (1865–1945), who used his ''Cochran Journal'' to reach out to Bleckley County, from 1910 to 1925. The paper mirrored Bailey's personality and philosophy for it was folksy, outspoken, and upbeat and covered a variety of local topics. Bailey was a strong advocate for diversified farming, quality education, civic and political reform, and controls on alcohol and gambling.

Cotton

In the early 1900s, Georgia experienced economic expansion in both the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. The cotton industry benefited from the depredations of the

boll weevil The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growin ...

further west. In 1911, Georgia produced a record 2.8 million bales of cotton. However, the boll weevil arrived in Georgia four years later. By 1921, infestation had reached such epidemic proportions that 45% of the states' cotton crop was destroyed. Demand during World War I drove cotton prices to a high of $1 a pound. After 1919, however, cotton quickly fell to 10 cents per pound. Landowners ruined by the boll weevil and declining prices expelled their sharecroppers.

African Americans

Although blacks also participated in the Progressive movement, the state remained in the grip of Jim Crow. In 1934, Georgia's poll tax, which also had excluded poor whites from voter rolls to reduce the Populist threat, was upheld in the Supreme Court case of ''

Breedlove v. Suttles ''Breedlove v. Suttles'', 302 U.S. 277 (1937), is an overturned United States Supreme Court decision which upheld the constitutionality of requiring the payment of a poll tax in order to vote in state elections. Background At the relevant time, ...

'' (1937). That challenge was brought by a poor white man seeking the ability to vote without paying a fee. By 1940 only 20,000 blacks in Georgia managed to register. In 1944 the Supreme Court's decision in ''

Smith v. Allwright ''Smith v. Allwright'', 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set thei ...

'' banned

white primaries White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. Statewide white primaries were established by the state Democratic Party units or by state legislatures in South ...

, and in 1945 Georgia repealed its poll tax. NAACP and other activists rapidly registered African Americans in cities such as Atlanta, but in rural areas they remained outside politics. Starting around 1910, and increasing as jobs began to open up during World War I, tens of thousands of African Americans in the Great Migration moved to northern industrial cities out of the rural South for work, better education for their children, the right to vote and for escape from the violence of lynchings. From 1910 to 1940 and in a second wave from the 1940s to 1970, a total of more than 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western industrial cities. They rapidly became urbanized, and many built successful middle-class lives as industrial workers. The demographics of the regions changed.

Prohibition and Coca-Cola

Prohibition was a central issue in local and state politics from the 1880s into the 1920s. Before

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, it was widely believed that the solution to drunkenness was the religious revival, which would turn the sinner into a teetolaling Christian. The Drys were led by ministers and middle-class women of the

Woman's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...

, who succeeded in securing a local option law that dried up most of the rural counties. Atlanta and the other cities were wet strongholds. By 1907, the much more effective

Anti-Saloon League The Anti-Saloon League (now known as the ''American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems'') is an organization of the temperance movement that lobbied for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. Founded in 1893 in Ober ...

took over from the preachers and women and cut deals with the politicians, such as Hoke Smith. The League pushed through a prohibition law in 1907. However, the law had loopholes that allowed Georgians to import whiskey from other states through the mail, and provided for "saloons" that supposedly sold only non-alcoholic drinks. In 1915, the drys passed a state law that effectively closed nearly all the liquor traffic. Illegal distilling and bootlegging continued. During this time, a

non-alcoholic beverage An alcohol-free or non-alcoholic drink, also known as a temperance drink, is a version of an alcoholic drink made without alcohol, or with the alcohol removed or reduced to almost zero. These may take the form of a non-alcoholic mixed drink (a "v ...

, first introduced in 1886, gained in popularity. In 1886, when Atlanta and

passed

legislation, pharmacist

responded by developing

. It was essentially a non-alcoholic version of the popular French wine coca. The first sales were at Jacob's Pharmacy in

, on May 8, 1886. It was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass at

soda fountain A soda fountain is a device that dispenses carbonated soft drinks, called fountain drinks. They can be found in restaurants, concession stands and other locations such as convenience stores. The device combines flavored syrup or syrup concentra ...

s, which were popular in the United States at the time due to the belief that carbonated water was good for the health. In 1887,

Asa Griggs Candler Asa Griggs Candler (December 30, 1851 – March 12, 1929) was an American business tycoon and politician who in 1888 purchased the Coca-Cola recipe for $238.98 from chemist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. Candler founded The Coca-C ...

bought the cola company from Pemberton, and with aggressive regional, national and international marketing turned it into one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the New South. Candler was later elected Mayor of Atlanta, taking office immediately after the passage of Georgia's state-wide prohibition law of 1915. He served from 1916 to 1919. Atlanta's first airport,

Candler Field Candler may refer to: People * Candler (surname) Places * Candler, Florida, an unincorporated town in Marion County * Candler, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Candler, North Carolina, an unincorporated town in Buncombe County * Candler C ...

was named in his honor. Candler Field was subsequently renamed

Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

Social tension

Georgia took the national spotlight, in 1915, with the lynching of Atlanta Jewish factory superintendent

Leo Frank Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884August 17, 1915) was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national at ...

. Frank had been convicted, in 1913, of the murder of a white Irish Catholic employee, thirteen-year-old

Mary Phagan Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884August 17, 1915) was an American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national at ...

. After Frank's

death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

was commuted to

life in prison Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...

by the outgoing Governor, an outraged lynch mob seized Frank from his jail cell and hanged him. Ringleaders calling themselves 'The Knights of Mary Phagan' included prominent politicians, most notably former Governor

Joseph Mackey Brown Joseph Mackey Brown (December 28, 1851 – March 3, 1932) was an American politician. He served two non-consecutive terms as the 59th governor of Georgia, the first from 1909 to 1911 and the second from 1912 to 1913. He has also been posthumou ...

. Publisher

Thomas E. Watson Thomas Edward Watson (September 5, 1856 – September 26, 1922) was an American politician, attorney, newspaper editor and writer from Georgia. In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the Populist Party, articulating an a ...

was accused of helping to instigate the violence, through inflammatory newspaper coverage. The rising social tensions from new immigration, urban migration and rapid change contributed to revival of the Ku Klux Klan. On November 25, 1915, a group led by William J. Simmons burned a cross on top of

Stone Mountain Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome Inselberg, monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, east of Atlanta, Georgia. Outside the park is the small city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is the most visited tourist site in the state o ...

, inaugurating a revival of the 2nd Klan. The event was attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors of the original Klan.

was designated as its Imperial City. The Klan quickly grew to occupy a powerful role in both state and municipal politics. Governor

Clifford Walker Clifford Mitchell Walker (July 4, 1877 – November 9, 1954) was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Georgia. A graduate of the University of Georgia in 1897, he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Wal ...

, who served from 1923 to 1927, was closely associated with the Klan. By the end of the decade, the organization suffered from a number of scandals, internal feuds, and voices raised in opposition. Klan membership in the state declined from a peak of 156,000 in 1925 to 1,400 in 1930.

Women's suffrage

Rebecca Latimer Felton Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer, feminist, suffragist, reformer, slave owner, and politician who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, although she serve ...

(1835–1930) was the most prominent woman leader in Georgia. Born into a wealthy plantation family, she married an active politician, managed his career, and became a political expert. An outspoken feminist, she became a leader of the prohibition and woman's suffrage movements, endorsed lynching, fought for reform of prisons, and filled leadership roles in many reform organizations. In 1922, she was appointed to the

. She was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served one day. She was the first woman to serve in the Senate. Although middle-class urban women were well-organized supporters of suffrage, the rural areas were hostile. The state legislature ignored efforts to let women vote in local elections, and not only refused to ratify the Federal 19th Amendment, but took pride in being the first state to reject it. The Amendment passed nationally and Georgia women gained the right to vote in 1920. However, black women were largely excluded from voting by the state's discriminatory devices until after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced their constitutional rights.

Great Depression and Second World War

The state was relatively prosperous in the 1910s. The price of cotton remained high, until the end of

. Lower

commodity prices In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

in the 1920s had a negative impact on the rural economy, which, in turn, effected the entire state. By 1932,

economic recession In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by variou ...

had deteriorated into a severe depression. Cotton prices decreased from a high of $1.00 a pound during World War I, to $.20 in the late 1920s, to lows of 6 cents in 1931 and 1932. The Great Depression proved to be difficult, economically, for both rural and urban Georgia. Farmers and blue-collar workers were impacted the most. Georgia benefited from several New Deal programs, which raised cotton prices to $.11 or $.12 a pound, promoted rural electrification, and set up rural and urban work relief programs. Enacted during Roosevelt's first 100 days in office, the

Agricultural Adjustment Act The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on par ...

paid farmers to plant less cotton, to reduce oversupply. Between 1933 and 1940, the New Deal injected $250 million into the Georgia economy.New Georgia Encyclopedia: New Deal in Georgia
/ref> Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Georgia on numerous occasions. He established his '

Little White House The Little White House was the personal retreat of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, located in the Historic District of Warm Springs, Georgia. He first came to Warm Springs (formerly known as Bullochville) in 19 ...

' in Warm Springs, where the therapeutic waters offered treatment and relief for the President's paralytic illness. Roosevelt's proposals were popular with many members of Georgia's congressional delegation. The

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

put young men, formerly on relief, back to work. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration supported the price of cotton and peanuts. Work relief programs spread federal money across the state. However, the most powerful member of the Georgia delegation, Congressman Eugene Cox, often opposed legislation which favored labor and urban interests, particularly the

National Industrial Recovery Act The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also ...

. Georgia's powerful governor

Eugene Talmadge Eugene Talmadge (September 23, 1884 – December 21, 1946) was an attorney and American politician who served three terms as the 67th governor of Georgia, from 1933 to 1937, and then again from 1941 to 1943. Elected to a fourth term in November ...

(1933–37) disliked Roosevelt and the New Deal. He was a former Agriculture Commissioner who promoted himself as a 'real dirt farmer', winning the support of his rural constituencies. Talmadge opposed many New Deal programs. Appealing to his white conservative base, Talmadge denounced New Deal programs that paid black workers wages equal to whites, and attacked what he described as the communist tendencies of the New Deal. The Roosevelt administration was often able to circumvent Talmadge's opposition by working with pro-New Deal politicians, most notably Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield. In the 1936 election, Talmadge unsuccessfully attempted to run for the Senate, but lost to pro-New Deal incumbent Richard Russell, Jr. The candidate he endorsed for Governor was also defeated. Under the pro-New Deal administration of State House speaker E.D. Rivers, by 1940 Georgia led the nation in the number of Rural Electrification Cooperatives and rural public housing projects. Between 1933 and the early 1940s the administration of Franklin D Roosevelt spent slightly over $250 million on projects in Georgia for projects such as malaria control, rural sanitation, hot lunches for school children, nursing services and art projects. Re-elected Governor in 1940, Talmadge suffered a political setback when he fired a dean at the University of Georgia, on the grounds that the dean had advocated integration. When this action was opposed by the

Georgia Board of Regents The Georgia Board of Regents oversees the University System of Georgia as part of the state government of Georgia in the United States. The University System of Georgia is composed of all state public institutions of higher education in the state. ...

, Governor Talmadge reconfigured the board, appointing members more favorable to his views. This, in turn, led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to withdraw accreditation from ten of the state's colleges and universities. In 1942, Talmadge was defeated in his bid for reelection. However, he was reelected in 1946, but died before taking office. The death of the Governor-elect precipitated a political crisis known as the ''

three governors controversy The three governors controversy was a political crisis in the U.S. state of Georgia from 1946 to 1947. On December 21, 1946, Eugene Talmadge, the governor-elect of Georgia, died before taking office. The state constitution did not specify who wo ...

'', which was only resolved after a legal ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court. Factory production during

lifted Georgia's economy out of recession. Marietta's Bell Aircraft plant, the principal assembly site for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, employed nearly 28,000 people at its peak, Robins Air Field near Macon employed nearly 13,000 civilians; Fort Benning became the world's largest infantry training school; and newly opened Fort Gordon became a major deployment center. Shipyards in Savannah and Brunswick built many of the

Liberty Ship Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Ma ...

s used to transport

materiel Materiel (; ) refers to supplies, equipment, and weapons in military supply-chain management, and typically supplies and equipment in a commercial supply chain context. In a military context, the term ''materiel'' refers either to the specif ...

to the

European European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...

and Pacific Theaters. Following the cessation of hostilities, the state's urban centers continued to thrive. In 1946, Georgia became the first state to allow 18-year-olds to vote, and remained the only one to do so before passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971. (Three other states set the voting age at 19 or 20.) That same year, the Communicable Disease Center, later called the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georg ...

was founded in Atlanta from staff of the former Malaria Control in War Areas offices. From 1946 to 1955, some 500 new factories were constructed in the state. By 1950, more Georgians were employed in manufacturing than farming. At the same time, the mechanization of agriculture dramatically reduced the need for farm laborers. This precipitated another wave of urban migration, as former sharecroppers and tenant farmers moved chiefly to the urban Midwest, West and

Northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

, as well as to Georgia's own burgeoning urban centers. During the war, Atlanta's

was the nation's busiest airport in terms of flight operations. Afterwards Mayor Hartsfield lobbied successfully to make the city

Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc., typically referred to as Delta, is one of the major airlines of the United States and a legacy carrier. One of the world's oldest airlines in operation, Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline, along w ...

' hub for commercial air travel, based on Atlanta's strategic location in relation to the nation's major population centers. The airport was subsequently renamed, in his honor.

Civil Rights Movement

African Americans who served in the segregated military during World War II returned to a still segregated nation and a South which still enforced

. Many were motivated to participate in the NAACP and other groups to enforce their constitutional rights, especially the right to vote, and the right of their children to an equal education. Following the 1946 US Supreme Court decision in ''

'', which overturned white primaries, NAACP activists worked to register voters. Statewide, 135,000 blacks registered to vote in 1946, and 85,000 did vote. Atlanta, home to a number of traditional black colleges, sustained a large, educated, middle-class black community which produced leaders of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. In the postwar period, the new movement for change was carried forward by several groups, with somewhat different agendas, but united in the goal of civil rights for African Americans. The voting rights campaign in Atlanta was spearheaded by the All Citizen's Registration Committee. The idea of change was not universally embraced. The Supreme Court's decision in ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

'' (1954) was denounced by Governor

Marvin Griffin Samuel Marvin Griffin, Sr. (September 4, 1907 – June 13, 1982) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia. A lifelong Democrat, Griffin was a native of Bainbridge, Georgia and publisher of the ''Bainbridge Post-Searchligh ...

, who pledged to keep Georgia's schools segregated, "come hell or high water". In January of 1956, Bobby Grier became the first black player to participate in the Sugar Bowl. He is also regarded as the first black player to compete at a bowl game in the Deep South, though others such as Wallace Triplett had played in games like the 1948 Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Grier's team, the Pittsburgh Panthers, was set to play against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. However, Georgia's Governor

beseeched Georgia Tech's president

Blake Van Leer Blake Ragsdale Van Leer (August 16, 1893 – January 23, 1956) was an engineer and university professor who served as the fifth president of Georgia Institute of Technology from 1944 until his death in 1956. Early life and education Van Leer was ...

and it's players to not participate in this racially integrated game. Griffin was widely criticized by news media leading up to the game, and protests were held at his mansion by Georgia Tech students. After delivering a commencement speech at the all-Black Morris Brown College, Van Leer was summoned by the board of regents where he was quoted Despite the governor's objections, Georgia Tech upheld the contract and proceeded to compete in the bowl. In the game's first quarter, a pass interference call against Grier ultimately resulted in Yellow Jackets' 7-0 victory. Grier stated that he has mostly positive memories about the experience, including the support from teammates and letters from all over the world. In 1958 the state passed legislation to restrict voter registration by requiring illiterate candidates to answer 20 of 30 questions of comprehension posed by white registrars. In practice, it was used subjectively to disqualify blacks. In rural counties such as

Terrell Terrell, Terell, Terrel, or Terrelle may refer to: Places United States *Terrell, Georgia, unincorporated community *Terrell, North Carolina, unincorporated community in Catawba County, North Carolina, United States *Terrell, Texas, city in Kau ...

, black voting registration was repressed. After the legislation, although the county was 64% black in population, only 48 blacks managed to register to vote. Atlanta-born minister,

, emerged as a national leader in the

Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...

of 1955 in Alabama. The son of a

Baptist minister Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...

, King earned a doctorate from Boston University and was part of the educated middle class that had developed in Atlanta's African-American community. The success of the Montgomery boycott led to King's joining with others to form the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...

(SCLC) in Atlanta in 1957, to provide political leadership for the Civil Rights Movement across the South. Black churches had long been important centers of their communities. Ministers and their thousands of congregations throughout the South were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle. Lyndon Johnson signing Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964

Lyndon Johnson signing Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964

The SCLC led a desegregation campaign in

Albany, Georgia Albany ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Georgia. Located on the Flint River, it is the seat of Dougherty County, and is the sole incorporated city in that county. Located in southwest Georgia, it is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia m ...

in 1961. This campaign, however, failed to rally significant support or to achieve any dramatic victories. Nonetheless the Albany campaign provided important lessons, which were put to use in the more successful

Birmingham campaign The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts o ...

of 1963–64 in Alabama. National opinion eventually turned in favor of the moral position of civil rights for all citizens. Before his assassination, President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

prepared and submitted a Civil Rights bill to Congress. Kennedy's successor,

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

, made the legislation a priority in his administration. In 1964, President Johnson secured passage of the

Civil Rights Act Civil Rights Act may refer to several acts of the United States Congress, including: * Civil Rights Act of 1866, extending the rights of emancipated slaves by stating that any person born in the United States regardless of race is an American ci ...

. The following year he secured passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. African Americans throughout the South registered to vote and began to re-enter the political process. By the 1960s, the proportion of African Americans in Georgia had declined to 28% of the state's population, after waves of migration to the North and some in-migration by whites. With their voting power diminished, it took some years for African Americans to win a state-wide office.

Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...

, a noted civil rights leader, was elected to the state House in 1965, and served multiple terms there and in the state senate. Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. testified before Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act, and Governor

Carl Sanders Carl Edward Sanders Sr. (May 15, 1925 – November 16, 2014) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 74th Governor of the state of Georgia from 1963 to 1967. Early life and education Carl Sanders was born on May 15, 1925 in ...

worked with the Kennedy administration to ensure the state's compliance.

Ralph McGill Ralph Emerson McGill (February 5, 1898 – February 3, 1969) was an American journalist and editorialist. An anti-segregationist editor he published the ''Atlanta Constitution'' newspaper. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Juror ...

, editor and syndicated columnist at the ''

'', earned both admiration and enmity by writing in support of the Civil Rights Movement. However, the majority of white Georgians continued to oppose integration. In 1966,

Lester Maddox Lester Garfield Maddox Sr. (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 75th governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. A populist Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a staunch segregatio ...

was elected Governor of Georgia. Maddox, who opposed forced integration, had gained fame by threatening African-American civil rights demonstrators who tried to enter his restaurant. After taking office, Maddox appointed more African Americans to positions of responsibility than any governor since Reconstruction. In 1969, the

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

filed a successful lawsuit against Georgia, requiring the state to integrate public schools. In 1970, newly elected Governor

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...

declared in his inaugural address that the era of racial segregation had ended. In 1972 Georgians elected

Andrew Young Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...

to Congress as the first African American since

Late 20th century to present: Georgia Growth

In 1980, construction was completed on an expansion of William B. Hartsfield International Airport. The busiest in the world, it was designed to accommodate up to 55 million passengers a year. The airport became a major engine for economic growth. With the advantages of cheap real estate, low taxes, right-to-work laws and a regulatory environment limiting government interference, the Atlanta metropolitan area became a national center of finance, insurance, and real estate companies, as well as the convention and trade show business. As a testament to the city's growing international profile, in 1990 the International Olympic Committee selected

as the site of the

. Taking advantage of Atlanta's status as a transportation hub, in 1991 United Parcel Service, UPS established its headquarters in a suburb. In 1992, construction finished on Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta), Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in the U.S. outside New York or Chicago. Following national Democratic support for civil rights legislation, Georgia, along with the rest of the formerly Democratic

, gradually shifted to support Republican Party (United States), Republicans, first in presidential elections. Realignment was hastened by the turbulent one-term presidency of native-son

, the popularity of Ronald Reagan, organizational efforts of the Republican Party, and the perception of a growing liberalism within the national

. While Carter would prevail in the state in both his 1976 and 1980 campaigns, and another southern governor, Bill Clinton, would win the state in 1992, Republicans increasingly held the upper hand in presidential politics from the mid-1960s onward. As the era of old south Democratic control, symbolized by iconic personalities Herman Talmadge and Georgia Speaker of the House Tom Murphy (U.S. politician), Tom Murphy drew to an end, new Republican leaders took their place. Republican congressman Newt Gingrich, the acknowledged leader of the Republican Revolution, was elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Speaker of the House. His seat represented the northern suburbs of Atlanta. Bob Barr, another Georgia Republican congressman, was a leader of the campaign to Impeachment of Bill Clinton, impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998. In this shifting political climate, many leading Georgia Democrats, most notably Governor Zell Miller (1990–99), drifted to the right. After being appointed to the U.S. Senate by his successor, Roy Barnes, following the death of early state GOP standard-bearer Paul Coverdell in 2000, Miller emerged as a prominent ally of George W. Bush on the war in Iraq, Social Security debate (United States), Social Security privatization, tax cuts, and other conservative-backed issues. He delivered a controversial keynote speech at the 2004 Republican convention where he endorsed Bush for reelection and denounced the liberalism of his Democratic Party colleagues. In a pattern common across the region, other white Democrats retired or switched parties as Democrats' fortunes declined with white voters, including future Republican governors Sonny Perdue and Nathan Deal. In 2002, Georgia elected Perdue as the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, defeating Barnes. Shortly thereafter, Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Georgia General Assembly, state legislature and all Political party strength in U.S. states, state-wide elected offices. CNN reported that in 2008 presidential election exit polls, 39% of the voters identified as conservatives; 48% moderates and 13% liberals. 37% identified as "White Evangelical/Born-Again," and they voted 89% for Republican John McCain, who carried the state's electoral votes. The other 63% voted two-to-one for Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American to be 2008 United States presidential election, elected as president. In 2012 and 2016, Republicans continued to prevail in Georgia, with nominees Mitt Romney and Donald Trump carrying the state in those elections; Romney 2012 United States presidential election, lost nationally to Obama, while Trump 2016 United States presidential election, won the electoral college vote and thus the presidency against former U.S. senator, secretary of state, and first lady Hillary Clinton. Signs the Republicans might be losing their grip on the state began to appear in the state's 2018 United States elections, 2018 elections. While the List of Governors of Georgia, governor's office remained in Republican hands (Brian Kemp, then the Georgia Secretary of State, state's secretary of state, avoided a potential run-off against an African American woman, former state house minority party leader Stacey Abrams, by just 17,488 votes), in the state legislature they fared more poorly: Republicans lost eight seats in the Georgia House of Representatives (winning 106), while Democrats gained ten (winning 74); in the Georgia State Senate, Georgia Senate, Republicans lost two seats (winning 35 seats), while Democrats gained two seats (winning 21). In congressional races that year, Democrats also posted a gain when five Democratic United States House of Representatives, U.S. Representatives were elected with Republicans winning nine seats (one winning with just 419 votes over the Democratic challenger, and one seat being lost). Democrats made a major breakthrough in 2020, when Georgians narrowly backed a Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, who was the first to prevail in the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Biden won Georgia's electoral college vote over incumbent GOP president Donald Trump by 12,670 votes, on his way to a 2020 United States presidential election, national electoral college victory. Continuing the Democratic trend in early 2021, challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock successfully won run-off elections against Republican incumbents to become the first Democrats to represent the state in the U.S. Senate in 18 years.

Notes

References

Surveys

''New Georgia Encyclopedia'' (2005)
Scholarly resource covering all topics. * Bartley, Numan V. ''The Creation of Modern Georgia'' (1990). Scholarly history 1865–1990. * Coleman, Kenneth. ed. ''A History of Georgia'' (1991). Survey by scholars. * Coulter, E. Merton. ''A Short History of Georgia'' (1933) * Grant, Donald L. ''The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia'' 1993 *London, Bonta Bullard. (1999) ''Georgia: The History of an American State'' Montgomery, Alabama: Clairmont Press . A middle school textbook.

Scholarly studies to 1900

*Bass, James Horace. "The Attack upon the Confederate Administration in Georgia in the Spring of 1864." ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' 18 (1934): 228–247. *Bass, James Horace. "The Georgia Gubernatorial Elections of 1861 and 1863." ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' 17 (1935): 167–188 *Bryan, T. Conn. ''Confederate Georgia'' University of Georgia Press, 1953. * Chaplin, Joyce E. "Creating a Cotton South in Georgia and South Carolina, 1760–1815." ''Journal of Southern History'' 57.2 (1991): 171–200 online. *Coleman, Kenneth. ''Confederate Athens, 1861–1865'' University of Georgia Press, 1967; the city of Athens in the war years * Escott, Paul D. "Joseph E. Brown, Jefferson Davis, and the Problem of Poverty in the Confederacy," ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 59–7
in JSTOR
*Flynn Jr., Charles L. ''White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia'' (LSU Press 1983) *Freehling, William W., and Craig M. Simpson; ''Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in 1860'' Oxford University Press, 1992 * Greene, Evarts Boutell. ''Provincial America, 1690–1740'' (1905
ch 15 online pp 249–269 covers 1732–1754.
* Haggard, Dixie Ray. “The First Invasion of Georgia and the Myth of Westo Power, 1656–1684,” ''Journal of Military History'' 86:3 (July 2022): 533–5

*Hahn Steven. ''The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890.'' Oxford University Press, 1983. * *Miles, Jim ''To the Sea: A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West: Sherman's March Across Georgia, 1864'' Cumberland House Publishing, (2002) *Mohr, Clarence L. ''On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia'' (1986) *Parks, Joseph H. ''Joseph E. Brown of Georgia.'' LSU Press, 1977. *Parks, Joseph H. "State Rights in a Crisis: Governor Joseph E. Brown versus President Jefferson Davis." ''Journal of Southern History'' 32 (1966): 3–24
in JSTOR
*Pyron; Darden Asbury. ed. ''Recasting: Gone with the Wind in American Culture'' University Press of Florida. (1983
online
* Range, Willard. ''A century of Georgia Agriculture, 1850–1950'' (1954) *Reidy; Joseph P. ''From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800–1880'' University of North Carolina Press
(1992)
* Reidy, Joseph P. "Karen A. Bradley: Voice of Black Labor in the Georgia Lowcountry," in Howard N. Rabinowitz, ed. ''Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era'' (1982) pp 281 – 309. * Russell, James M. and Thornbery, Jerry. "William Finch of Atlanta: The Black Politician as Civic Leader," in Howard N. Rabinowitz, ed. ''Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era'' (1982) pp 309–34. * Saye, Albert B. ''New Viewpoints in Georgia History'' 1943, on Revolution * Schott, Thomas E. ''Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography''. LSU Press, 1988. * Thompson, C. Mildred. ''Reconstruction In Georgia: Economic, Social, Political 1865-1872'' (19i5; 2010 reprint
excerpt and text searchfull text online free
* Thompson, C. Mildred. ''Reconstruction In Georgia: Economic, Social, Political 1865–1872'' (19i5; 2010 reprint) excerpt and text search
full text online free
* Thompson, William Y. ''Robert Toombs of Georgia.'' LSU Press, 1966. * Wallenstein; Peter. ''From Slave South to New South: Public Policy in Nineteenth-Century Georgia'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1987
online edition
* Wetherington, Mark V. ''Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2005) 383 pp
online review by Frank Byrne
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel'' (1938)

Since 1900

* Boyd, Tim S.R. ''Georgia Democrats, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Shaping of the New South'' (University Press of Florida; 2012) 302 pages; rejects the "white backlash" model of the decline of the Democratic party in Georgia; blames factional disputes. *Fink, Gary M. ''Prelude to the Presidency: The Political Character and Legislative Leadership Style of Governor Jimmy Carter'' (Greenwood Press, 1980) *Gilbert Fite, Fite, Gilbert C. ''Richard B. Russell, Jr., Senator from Georgia'' University of North Carolina Press, 1991 * Ford, Pearl K., ed. ''African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy in the New South'' (Mercer University Press; 2010) 264 pages. Essays on such topics as electoral politics, education, and health-care disparities. *Peirce, Neal R. ''The Deep South States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Seven Deep South States'' (1974). Reporting on politics and economics 1960–72 * Range, Willard. ''A century of Georgia Agriculture, 1850–1950'' (1954) *Steely, Mel. ''The Gentleman from Georgia: The Biography of Newt Gingrich'' Mercer University Press, 2000. . *Tuck, Stephen G. N. ''Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940–1980'' . University of Georgia Press, 2001. . *Woodward, C. Vann. ''Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel'' (1938)

Local

* Bauerlein; Mark. ''Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906'' (Encounter Books, 2001
online edition
* Cashin, Edward J., and Glenn T. Eskew, eds. ''Paternalism in a Southern City: Race, Religion, and Gender in Augusta, Georgia'' (University of Georgia Press, 2001). *Ferguson; Karen. ''Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta'' University of North Carolina Press, 2002 *Flamming; Douglas ''Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884–1984'' University of North Carolina Press, 199
Online edition
* Garrett, Franklin Miller. ''Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events'' (1969), 2 vol. * Goodson, Steve. ''Highbrows, Hillbillies, and Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880–1930'' University of Georgia Press, 2002. . * Rogers, William Warren. ''Transition to the Twentieth Century: Thomas County, Georgia, 1900–1920'' 2002. vol 4 of comprehensive history of one county. * Scott, Thomas Allan. ''Cobb County, Georgia, and the Origin of the Suburban South: A Twentieth Century History'' (2003). * Werner, Randolph D. "The New South Creed and the Limits of Radicalism: Augusta, Georgia, before the 1890s." ''Journal of Southern History'' 67.3 (2001): 573-60
online
* Whites, LeeAnn. ''Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890'' (University of Georgia Press, 2000)

Primary sources

* *Scott, Thomas Allan ed. ''Cornerstones of Georgia History: Documents That Formed the State'' (1995). Collection of primary sources.

Online primary sources

Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe
by Thaddeus Mason Harris, 1841
A Brief Description and Statistical Sketch of Georgia
United States of America: developing its immense agricultural, mining and manufacturing advantages, with remarks on emigration. Accompanied with a map & description of lands for sale in Irwin County, By Richard Keily, 1849.
Essay on the Georgia Gold Mines
by William Phillips, 1833 (Excerpt from: American Journal of Science and Arts. New Haven, 1833. Vol. XXIV, No. i, First Series, April (Jan.-March), 1833, pp. 1–18.)
An Extract of John Wesley's Journal
from his embarking for Georgia to his return to London, 1739. The journal extends from October 14, 1735, to February 1, 1738.
Georgia Scenes
characters, incidents, &c. in the first half century of the Republic, by Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1840, 2nd ed)
Report on the Brunswick Canal and Rail Road
Glynn County, Georgia. With an appendix containing the charter and commissioners' report, by Loammi Baldwin, 1837
Society
A journal devoted to society, art, literature, and fashion, published in Atlanta, Georgia by the Society Pub. Co., 1890–
Views of Atlanta
and The Cotton State and International Exposition, 1895
Sir John Percival papers
also called: The Egmont Papers, transcripts and manuscripts, 1732–1745.
Transactions of the Trustees of Georgia, 1738–1739
also called: Egmont's Journal, 1738–1739.
Transactions of the Trustees of Georgia, 1741–1744
also called: Egmont's Journal, 1741–1744.
Educational survey of Georgia
by M.L. Duggan, rural school agent, under the direction of the Department of education. M.L. Brittain, state superintendent of schools. Publisher: Atlanta, 1914.
Digital Library of Georgia
Georgia's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources

External links

Georgia Historical SocietyNew Georgia EncyclopediaJekyll Island Club – Birthplace of the Federal ReserveGeorgia Archives
– official Archives of the State of Georgia * Boston Public Library, Map Center
Maps of Georgia
various dates. * {{Authority control History of Georgia (U.S. state), History of the Southern United States by state, Georgia History of the United States by state, Georgia Former English colonies