.gif)
History of Georgia (U.S. state)
Encyclopedia
The history of Georgia spans pre-Columbian
time to the present day.
, Archaic, Woodland
and Mississippian
.
The Mississippian culture, lasting from 800 to 1500 AD, developed urban societies, distinguished by their construction of truncated earthwork
pyramid mounds, or platform mound
s; as well as their hierarchical chiefdom
s; intensive village-based horticulture
, which enabled the development of more dense populations; and creation of ornate copper
, shell and mica
paraphernalia adorned with a series of motifs known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
(SECC). The largest Mound Builder sites surviving in present-day Georgia are Kolomoki
in Early County
, Etowah
in Bartow County, and Ocmulgee National Monument
in Macon
.
, the historic Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee
and Muskogean-speaking Creek and Yamasee
Indians lived in what is now Georgia. The Cherokee
spread southward along the Ridge and Valley Appalachians, occupying lands reaching to the upper Chattahoochee
, which formed the southern boundary of their lands, stretching all the way to the Ohio River
.
The Creek or Muscogee were a loose confederation of tribes descended from the Mississippian culture
people. They were divided between the Lower Creeks along the Ocmulgee
, Flint
and the lower Chattahoochee
rivers, and the more remote Upper Creeks along the Coosa
and Alabama
rivers. The Yamasee occupied the coastal areas along the Savannah River
.
Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León
may have sailed along the coast during his exploration of Florida
. In 1526, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón
attempted to establish a colony on an island, possibly near St. Catherines Island
.
The French founded the colonial settlement of Charlesfort in 1562 on Parris Island, when Jean Ribault
and his party of French Huguenots settled an area in the Port Royal Sound
area of present-day South Carolina
. Within a year the colony failed. Most of the colonists followed René Goulaine de Laudonnière
south and founded a new outpost called Fort Caroline
in present-day Florida .
Over the next few decade
s, a number of Spanish explorers from Florida
visited the inland
region of present-day Georgia. The local Mississippian culture, described by Hernando de Soto
in 1540, had completely disappeared by 1560. The people may have succumbed to new infectious diseases introduced by the Europeans.
English fur traders from the Province of Carolina
first encountered the Lower Creeks in 1690. The English established a fort at Ocmulgee
. There they traded iron
tools, guns, cloth, and rum for deerskins and Indian slaves captured by warring tribes in regular raids.
The conflict between Spain and Great Britain
over control of Georgia began in earnest in about 1670, when the British colony of South Carolina
was founded just north of the missionary provinces of Guale
and Mocama
, part of Spanish Florida
. Guale and Mocama, today part of Georgia, lay between Carolina's capital, Charles Town
, and Spanish Florida's capital, St. Augustine
. They were subjected to repeated military invasions by both sides.
The Spanish mission system was permanently destroyed by 1704. The coast of future Georgia was occupied by British-allied Yamasee
Indians until they were decimated in the Yamasee War
of 1715–1717. The surviving Yamasee fled to Florida, leaving the coast of Georgia depopulated, making formation of a new British colony possible. A few defeated Yamasee remained and later became known as the Yamacraw
.
English settlement began in the early 1730s after James Oglethorpe
, a Member of Parliament
, promoted the area be colonized with the worthy poor of England, to provide an alternative to the overcrowded debtors' prisons. Oglethorpe and other English philanthropists secured a royal charter
as the Trustees of the colony of Georgia
on June 9, 1732. It is commonly known Georgia was founded as a debtor or penal colony persists due to the numerous English convicts who were sentenced to transportation to Georgia. With the motto, "Not for ourselves, but for others," the Trustees selected colonists for Georgia. 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
. Oglethorpe mobilized local forces and defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh
. 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 South Carolina
demonstrated, slaves were more profitable than other forms of labor available to colonists. Improving economic conditions in Europe led to fewer whites being willing to immigrate as indentured servants. In addition, many of the whites suffered high mortality rates from the climate and diseases of the Low Country.
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. Some historians have surmised that the Africans had the knowledge and material techniques to build the elaborate earthworks of dams, banks, and irrigation systems throughout the Low Country that supported rice
and indigo
cultivation; Georgia planters imported slaves chiefly from rice-growing regions of present-day Sierra Leone
, the Gambia
and Angola
. 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.
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 Low Country
. Planters had higher rates of absenteeism from their large coastal plantations. They often took their families to the hills during the summer, the "sick season", when the Low Country had high rates of disease.
The pacing and development of large plantations made the Georgia coast society more like that of the West Indies than of Virginia
. There was a higher proportion of African-born slaves, and Africans who came from closely related regions. The slaves of the 'Rice Coast' of South Carolina and Georgia developed the unique Gullah
or Geechee culture (the latter term more common in Georgia), in which important parts of West Africa
n linguistic, religious and cultural heritage were preserved. This culture developed throughout the Low Country and Sea Islands, where enslaved African Americans later worked at cotton plantations. African-American influence was strong on 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
– as the colony was located a long distance from Canada and the French-allied Indians. However, in 1762 Georgia was believed to be under threat from a potential Spanish invasion from Florida, although this did not occur by the time peace was signed at the 1763 Treaty of Paris
. During this period the Cherokee Rebellion began.
Governor Wright wrote in 1766 that Georgia had
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
which rejected monarchy, aristocracy and corruption, and demanded government based on the will of the people. In particular, they demanded "No taxation without representation
" 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
. 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 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. (There never was a Georgia declaration of independence.) Georgia was no longer a colony; it was a state with a weak chief executive, the "President and Commander-in-Chief," who was elected by the Congress for a term of only six months. Archibald Bulloch
, 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
in 1779, American and French troops (the latter including a company of free blacks
from Haiti
) 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:
Georgia ratified the U.S. Constitution on January 2, 1788.
The original eight counties of Georgia were Burke
, Camden
, Chatham
, Effingham
, Glynn
, Liberty
, Richmond
and Wilkes
. Before these counties were created in 1777, Georgia had been divided into local government units called parishes.
established the eastern boundary of Georgia as the Savannah River
, to Tugalo Lake. 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. 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 boundary between Georgia and South Carolina at the Chattooga River
, proceeding northwest from the lake.
In 1794, Eli Whitney
, a Massachusetts
-born artisan residing in Savannah
, patented sac cotton gin
, mechanizing cotton
production. The Industrial Revolution
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
quickly came to dominate Georgia and the other southern states. Although Congress
banned the slave trade in 1808, Georgia's slave population continued to grow with the importation of slaves from the plantations of the South Carolina Low Country
and Chesapeake
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.
Slaves worked the fields in large cotton plantation
s, and the economy of the state became dependent on the institution of slavery. Requiring little cultivation and easy to transport, cotton proved ideally suited to the inland frontier. The lower Piedmont
or 'Black Belt' counties – comprising the middle third of the state and initially named for the regions distinctively dark and fertile soil – became the site of the largest and most productive cotton plantations.
In 1829, gold was discovered in the north Georgia mountains, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush
, the first gold rush
in U.S. history. A Federal mint was established in Dahlonega, Georgia
and continued to operate until 1861. An influx of white settlers pressured the U.S. government to take the land away from the Cherokee
Indians. They owned land, operated their own government with a written constitution, and did not recognize the authority of the state of Georgia.
Please note: In reference to Georgia being the first "gold rush" in U.S. history see wiki pages: "Gold Rush," and "Georgia Gold Rush," both of which state that it was the second gold rush in the U.S. The first having been in North Carolina in 1799,according to other wiki pages.
The dispute culminated in the Indian Removal Act
of 1830, under which all eastern tribes were sent west to Indian reservations 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 Andrew Jackson
and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin van Buren
dispatched federal troops to round up the Cherokee and deport them west of the Mississippi
. This forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears
led to the death of over 4,000 Cherokees.
Growth continued in the Black Belt region. 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 Piedmont
was settled mainly by white yeoman farmers of English descent. While there were also many smaller cotton plantations, the proportion of slaves was lower in north Georgia than in the coastal
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.
The proportion of slaves in Georgia was quite big since the cotton is most efficiently grown on large plantations with many slaves rather than on small family farms. The Sokoloff/Engerman (SE) hypothesis predicts that cotton producers with large slave plantations will have a restrictive franchise which has a wealth or literacy requirement for voting. That’s a factor to induce Georgia into Civil War as Southern party to keep their elite rights.
.
in February.
The first major battle in Georgia was a Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga
in 1863—it was the last major Confederate victory in the west. In 1864, William T. Sherman's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign
. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston
fought a series of delaying battles, the largest being the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
, as he tried to delay as long as possible by retreating toward Atlanta. Johnston's replacement, Gen. John Bell Hood
attempted several unsuccessful counterattacks at the Battle of Peachtree Creek
and the Battle of Atlanta
, but Sherman captured the city on September 2, 1864.
After the loss of Atlanta, Governor Brown
withdrew the state's militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army.
on November 15, en route to Milledgeville
, the state capital, which he reached on November 23, and the port city of Savannah
, which he entered on December 22. His army destroyed a swath of land about 60 miles (96.6 km) across in this campaign, less than 10% of the state. Once Sherman's army passed through, the Confederates regained control. The March is a major part of the state's folk history. The crisis was the setting for Margaret Mitchell
's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind
and the subsequent 1939 film
. One of the last land battles of the Civil War, the Battle of Columbus, Georgia
, was fought on the Georgia-Alabama border.
The memory of Sherman's March became iconic and central to the "Myth of the Lost Cause
." Most important were many "salvation stories" that tell not what Yankee soldiers destroyed, but what was saved by the quick thinking and crafty women on the home front, or perhaps was saved by a Northerners' appreciation of the beauty of homes and the charm of Southern women.
, became the first Confederate to be tried and executed as a war criminal.
In January 1865, William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate abandoned plantations in the Sea Islands
and redistribute land in smaller plots to former slaves, so that they might get a stake in life. Later that year after succeeding Lincoln in the presidency, Andrew Johnson
revoked the order and returned the plantations to their former owners.
After the Civil War, many blacks moved from rural areas to Atlanta to take part in rebuilding the city and railroads, have freedom from the plantation counties, and to set up their own communities. Others migrated away from plantations to towns and worked to reunite their families.
Andrew Johnson
's decision to restore the former Confederate states to the Union without requirements for change to reflect the outcome of the war was criticized by Radical Republicans in Congress. In March 1867, they passed the First Reconstruction Act to place the South under temporary military occupation to help manage the transition to citizenship of freedmen. Along with Alabama
and Florida
, Georgia was included in the Third Military District, under the command of General John Pope
.
To try to ensure the election of loyal governments, Radical Republicans passed an act requiring ex-Confederates to take an ironclad oath
of loyalty or be prevented from voting or holding office for a few years. They were replaced in southern legislatures by a coalition of newly enfranchised freedmen, Northerners (who were called carpetbaggers), and Southerners who were for the Union, also disparagingly called scalawags. The latter were mostly former Whigs
who had opposed secession.
In January 1868, Charles Jenkins
, Georgia's first governor elected after the end of the war, refused to authorize state funds for a racially integrated state constitutional convention. Pope's successor General George Meade dissolved Jenkins' government and replaced it with a military governor to ensure the constitutional convention was held representing all citizens.
This action outraged many white conservatives, already opposed to the Republican administration. Some were already engaged in organized political terrorism and others joined such insurgent paramilitary groups. The Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
, Nathan Bedford Forrest
, visited Atlanta several times in 1868 to help organize the Klan in Georgia. Political violence increased in the state against freedmen and their allies. The 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 of 1868.
In July 1868, the newly elected General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment
; a Republican governor, Rufus Bullock
, was inaugurated, and Georgia was readmitted to the Union. The state's Democrats, including former Confederate leaders Robert Toombs
and Howell Cobb
, convened in Atlanta to denounce Reconstruction. Theirs was described as the largest mass rally of whites held in Georgia. In September, white Republicans joined with the Democrats in expelling the thirty-two black legislators from the General Assembly. A week later in the southwest Georgia town of Camilla
, white residents attacked a black Republican rally and killed twelve men.
In 1868, Georgia became the first state in the South to implement the convict lease
system. It made money by leasing out the overwhelmingly black prison population to work for private businesses and citizens. The work force was unprotected and did not receive any income. Railroad companies, mines, turpentine distilleries and other manufacturers, in essence, used unpaid convict labor to hasten industrialization. While the entities employing convicts were legally obliged to provide humane treatment, widespread reports that leased convicts were being overworked, brutally whipped, and killed were completely ignored. Georgia’s incipient capitalists reaped huge profits from this system. The greatest beneficiary was Joseph E. Brown
, whose railroads, coal mines and iron works were all dependent on convict labor. (See next section.)
As whites tried to reestablish social and political dominance in a changed labor market in the midst of a severe agricultural depression, militia and lynch-mob violence directed against freedmen and their allies rose in Georgia and other Confederate states. It was continuation of the Civil War by other means.
These developments led many to call for return of Georgia to military rule, to ensure protection of citizens. Georgia was one of only two ex-Confederate states to vote against Ulysses S. Grant
in the presidential election of 1868. In March 1869 the state legislature defeated ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.
The same month the U.S. Congress again barred Georgia's representatives from their seats because of election fraud and inequities. This caused the re-imposition of military rule in December 1869. In January 1870, Gen. Alfred H. Terry, the final commanding general of the Third District, purged the General Assembly's of ex-Confederates. He replaced them with the Republican runners-up and reinstated the expelled black legislators. This created a large Republican majority in the legislature.
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. The Democrats subsequently won commanding majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. Under their threat of impeachment, the last Republican governor Rufus Bullock
fled the state.
Under the Reconstruction government, the former state capital of Milledgeville
was replaced by the inland rail terminus of Atlanta. Construction began on a new capitol building
, which was completed by 1889. The population of Atlanta increased rapidly.
Post-Reconstruction Georgia was dominated by the 'Bourbon
Triumvirate' of Joseph E. Brown
, Gen. 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. With their appeals to white supremacy, the Democrats effectively monopolized state politics. Colquitt
represented the old planter class; Brown
, head of Western & Atlantic Railroad and one of the states first millionaires, represented the New South
businessmen. Gordon was neither a planter nor a successful businessman, but proved the most skilled politician.
A general in the Army of Northern Virginia
who led the fabled last charge at Appomattox
, Brown was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan
in Georgia. He was the first former Confederate to serve in the U.S. Senate. There he helped write the Compromise of 1877
that ended Reconstruction. A native of northwest Georgia, his popularity impeded the growth of the 'mountain Republicanism' prevalent throughout southern Appalachia
, where slavery had been uncommon and resentment against the planter class widespread.
During the Gilded Age
, Georgia recovered from the devastation of the Civil War and had unprecedented economic growth based in part on development of resources. One of the most enduring products came about in reaction to the age's excesses. In 1885, when Atlanta and Fulton County
enacted prohibition
legislation, a local pharmacist, John Pemberton
invented a new drink. Two years later, after he sold the drink to Asa Candler who promoted it, Coca-Cola
became the state's most famous product.
Henry W. Grady
, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, emerged as the leading spokesman of the 'New South
'. 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
and Atlanta, as well as Graniteville
, on the Georgia-South Carolina
border, into textile manufacturing centers.
Due to Georgia's relatively untapped virgin forests, particularly in the thinly populated pine barrens
of the Atlantic Coastal Plain
, logging became a major industry. It supported other new industries, most notably paper mill
s and turpentine
distilling, which, by 1900, made Georgia the leading producer of naval stores. Also important were coal
, granite
and kaolin mining, the latter used in the manufacture of paper, bricks and ceramic piping.
Even after the Democrats gained power, in the volatile 1880s and 1890s the number of lynchings of blacks grew steadily, reaching its height in 1899, when twenty-seven 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. This period corresponded to Georgia's disfranchisement of blacks and many poor whites through changes to its constitution and addition of such requirements as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency requirements. Political violence was used against blacks to reduce voting until they were disfranchised, a situation that prevailed for more than 60 years into the 20th century.
The Cotton States and International Exposition was famous as the occasion of Booker T. Washington
's 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 agriculture, mechanics, and domestic service. He proposed building a broad base within existing conditions. 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, strongly disagreed with Washington and denounced him for acquiescing to oppression. Du Bois, the most highly educated black man in America, in 1897 joined the faculty of Atlanta University
and taught there for several years. His experience and research in Georgia informed his famous book The Souls of Black Folk.
The black community mobilized quickly to get as much education as possible. Starting from having only a few schools before the Civil War, by the end of the century, the community had seen more than 30,000 teachers trained and put to work in schools across the South for African American children. Often rural schools in Georgia and other states were held only a few months a year because of demands to use children for labor, but parents tried their best. Teaching was highly regarded as a career and seen as a way for talented leaders, both men and women, to help their race.
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
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 were reduced to fledgling small farmers.
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. As cotton prices plummeted below production costs, by the 1890s, 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
, 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
. They had faced death threats, mob violence and ballot-box stuffing to challenge the monopoly of their states' Bourbon Democrat
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
's vice-president, but Bryan selected New England
industrialist Arthur Sewall
as a concession to Democratic leaders.
Watson
was not reelected. As the Populist Party disintegrated, through his periodical The Jeffersonian, Watson crusaded as a vigorous anti-Semite, anti-Catholic and white supremacist. He attacked the socialism
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.
'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
and the 1908 constitutional amendment that required a person to satisfy qualifications for literacy tests and property ownership for voting. Because a grandfather clause
was used to waive those requirements for most whites, the legislation effectively secured the disfranchisement 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, 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.
Continued litigation by people from Georgia and other states brought some relief, as in the overturning of the grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States
(1915). White-dominated state legislatures and the state Democratic parties quickly responded by creating new barriers to expanded franchise, such as white-only primaries.
In 1934 Georgia passed legislation to impose a poll tax as a voting requirement, a provision upheld in the Supreme Court case of Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), a challenge 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
banned white-only primaries, and in 1945 Georgia repealed its poll tax. Black civil rights groups, especially the All-Citizens Registration Committee (ACRC) of Atlanta, moved quickly to register African Americans. By 1947 they had managed to register 125,000 people, 18.8% of those of eligible age.
In 1958 the state passed legislation again making registration more restrictive, by requiring those who were illiterate to answer 20 of 30 questions posed. In rural counties such as Terrell, black voting registration was repressed. After the legislation, although the county was 64% black in population, only 48 blacks managed to register to vote.
All Georgia citizens would not gain full protection for voting again until the mid-1960s, after African-American leadership in the Civil Rights Movement gained passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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
(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.
further west. In 1911, Georgia produced a record 2.8 million bales of cotton. Four years later, the boll weevil arrived in Georgia, and by 1921 reached such epidemic proportions that it destroyed 45% of the states' cotton crop. World War I drove cotton prices to a high of $1 a pound in 1919, but it quickly fell to 10 cents per pound. Landowners ruined by the boll weevil and declining prices expelled their sharecroppers.
for work, better education for their children, and the right to vote From 1910 to 1940 and in a second wave from the 1940s to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western industrial cities. They rapidly became urbanized and many built successful lives as industrial workers.
and secured 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
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 but it had with loopholes that allowed men to import whiskey from other states through the mail, and allowed saloons that supposedly sold only non-alcoholic drinks. The drys finally in 1915 passed an ironclad state law that effectively closed nearly all the liquor traffic. Illegal distilling and bootlegging continued, but most Georgians perforce turned to a new concoction invented in Atlanta, Coca-Cola
. Asa Griggs Candler
bought the cola company and with aggressive regional, national and international marketing turned it into one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the New South.
Although middle class women in Atlanta 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 to reject it. Nevertheless the Amendment passed and Georgia women gained the right to vote in 1920; black women did not vote until the 1960s.
, accused of raping and murdering a white Irish Catholic employee, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan. After appeals failed, a lynch mob murdered Frank in 1917. Ringleaders calling themselves 'The Knights of Mary Phagan' included prominent politicians, most notably former Governor Joseph Mackey Brown
. Publisher Watson
played a leading role in instigating the violence with inflammatory newspaper coverage.
Added to rising social tensions from new immigration, urban migration and rapid change, the trial contributed to revival of the Ku Klux Klan
, refounded in a ceremony at Stone Mountain
in November 1915. With Atlanta as its Imperial City, the Klan quickly grew to occupy a powerful role in state and municipal politics. Governor Clifford Walker
, who served from 1923 to 1927, was closely associated with the Klan. By the end of the decade, the organization suffered 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.
The Great Depression
Been hard times for both rural and urban Georgia, with farmers and blue-collar workers hit hardest.
Georgia benefited greatly by the New Deal
, which raised cotton prices to $.11 or $.12 a pound, brought rural electrification, and set up a rural and urban work relief programs. Enacted during Roosevelt's first 100 days in office, the Agricultural Adjustment Act
paid farmers to plant less cotton to reduce supply. Between 1933 and 1940, the New Deal brought $250 million to Georgia. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Identified with The hardships of life and Georgia as he repeatedly returned to the 'Little White House
' where he was treated for polio with the therapeutic waters of Warm Springs
.
Roosevelt's proposals were popular among the Georgia congressional delegation, especially the Civilian Conservation Corps
Which put young men on relief to work, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration which supported the price of cotton and peanuts, and the In the work relief programs that spread 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 Administration.
Georgia's powerful governor Eugene Talmadge
(1933–37) disliked Roosevelt and the new deal. He was a former Agriculture Commissioner whose claims to be a 'real dirt farmer' won him the loyalty of his rural constituencies. Talmadge sought to subvert many New Deal programs. Appealing to white supremacy, he 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. 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.
Although re-elected Governor in 1940, Talmadge suffered from a scandal caused by his firing of a dean of the University of Georgia system, on the grounds that he advocated racial equality. This led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
to withdraw accreditation from the state's white colleges. In 1942, Talmadge was defeated in his bid for reelection. In 1946, he was reelected, in part by opposing a Federal court ruling that invalidated the white primary, but he died before taking office. The administration was often able to circumvent Talmadge's opposition by working with pro-New Deal politicians, most notably Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield
.
Wartime factory production during World War II
lifted Georgia's economy out of recession. Marietta
's Bell Aircraft plant, the principal assembly site for the B-29 Superfortress
bomber, employed some 28,000 people at its peak, Robins Air Field
near Macon
employed some 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
s used to transport materiel
to the European 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.) The same year, the Communicable Disease Center, later called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
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. It precipitated another wave of urban migration of former sharecroppers and tenant farmers, chiefly to the urban Midwest, West
and Northeast
, but also to the state's own burgeoning urban centers. During the war, Atlanta's Candler Field
was the nation's busiest airport in terms of flight operation. Afterwards Mayor Hartsfield
lobbied successfully to make the city a hub of commercial air travel, based on its strategic location in relation to the nation's major population centers.
In 1960 after waves of migration to the North, African Americans in Georgia declined to 28% of the state's population, a total of 1,122,596 people. Most of those of eligible voting age were still disfranchised. With Atlanta's leadership among educated, middle-class blacks, Georgia became an important battleground in the American Civil Rights Movement
.
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education
(1954) was denounced by Governor Marvin Griffin
, who pledged to keep Georgia's schools segregated, "come hell or high water".
Atlanta-born and bred Baptist
minister Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
emerged as a national leader in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
in 1955. The son of a minister, King earned a doctorate from Boston University and was part of the educated middle class that had developed in the strong African-American community of Atlanta. The success of the Montgomery boycott led to King's joining with others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(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 congregations were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle.
In Georgia and elsewhere, tensions over social change broke out into violence. In 1958, a group called the 'Confederate Underground' bombed a Reform Jewish temple in Atlanta
in reaction to Jewish support of the Civil Rights Movement.
The SCLC led a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia
in 1961. Together with the local police chief's restraint from violence, this campaign's broad focus failed to achieve any dramatic victories. The Albany campaign taught King and the SCLC important lessons which they put to use in the more successful Birmingham campaign
of 1963–64 in Alabama. The leadership of King and his followers led national opinion to turn in favor of the moral position of activists' claiming common civil rights for all citizens. John F. Kennedy
and his brother Bobby prepared and submitted a Civil Rights bill to Congress.
With the cause of African Americans' capturing the support of the nation, in 1964 President Johnson secured passage of the Civil Rights Act
. The following year he secured passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which established protections for voting. African Americans throughout the South quickly registered to vote and began to re-enter the political process, but it took some years for Georgians to elect the first African American to Congress in the 20th century.
Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. testified before Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act, and Governor Carl Sanders
worked with the Kennedy
administration to ensure the state's compliance. Ralph McGill
, editor and syndicated columnist at the Atlanta Constitution, 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 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater
won a majority of votes for president in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, in part because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act
. In 1968 arch-segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace
won these three states when he ran as an Independent for the Presidency.
In 1966, Lester Maddox
was elected Governor of Georgia. He had gained fame by threatening African-American civil rights demonstrators who attempted to enter his public restaurant. He stubbornly agitated against integration. After the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Gov. Maddox refused to honor the Nobel Prize winner by allowing his body to lie in state at the capitol.
In 1969, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a successful lawsuit against the state that required integration of public schools. In 1970, newly elected Governor Jimmy Carter
declared in his inaugural address that the era of racial segregation had ended.
Passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) enabled African Americans to regain their suffrage and formal political participation. In 1972 Georgians elected Andrew Young
to Congress as the first African American since Reconstruction. He had been one of King
's lieutenants in the movement. In 1973, the city of Atlanta elected Maynard Jackson
as its first African-American mayor.
. The largest 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, anti-union Right-to-work
laws and lax corporate regulations, 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 Atlanta as the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics
. Taking advantage of Atlanta's status as a transportation hub, in 1991 UPS
established its headquarters in a suburb. In 1992, construction finished on Bank of America Plaza
, the tallest building in the U.S. outside New York or Chicago.
In reaction to the association of the Democratic Party
with civil rights legislation and Federal involvement on integration , Georgia, along with the rest of the formerly Democratic Solid South
, gradually shifted to support Republican
s, first in presidential elections. Realignment was hastened by the turbulent one-term Presidency of native-son Jimmy Carter
, the popularity of Reagan
and organizational efforts of the Republican Party, and the growth of the Religious Right
.
The Christian Coalition, whose leader, Ralph E. Reed, Jr.
, had close ties to Georgia, mobilized evangelical
and fundamentalist Christian voters in support of Republican candidates during the 1994 midterm elections. Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich
, the acknowledged leader of the Republican Revolution
, was elected Speaker of the House. His seat represented the wealthy northern suburbs of Atlanta. Bob Barr
, another Georgia Republican Congressman, introduced the Defense of Marriage Act
and led the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton
. Barr later switched his party affiliation to Libertarian
and announced his intention to run for the U.S. presidency on May 12, 2008. On May 25, he was nominated at the Libertarian convention.
Georgia gained notoriety as a center of radical right-wing terrorism. During the 1996 Olympics, after the International Olympic Committee
condemned the anti-homosexuality resolutions passed by suburban Cobb County
, Eric Robert Rudolph
, a militant Christian fundamentalist detonated a bomb
that killed one person and wounded 11. The following year, the Army of God
, to which Rudolph was linked, bombed an Atlanta lesbian nightclub and an abortion clinic.
In this political climate, Georgia's leading Democrat, Governor Zell Miller
(1990–99), shifted to the right. After being appointed to the Senate following the death of Coverdell in 2000, he emerged as a prominent ally of George W. Bush
on the war in Iraq, Social Security privatization
, tax cuts, and opposition to gay marriage. He delivered a controversial keynote speech at the 2004 Republican convention where he endorsed Bush for reelection and denounced his Democratic Party colleagues. In 2002, Georgia elected Sonny Perdue
, the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. He had campaigned against a controversial redesign of the state flag that removed the Confederate battle emblem.
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
time to the present day.
Pre-Columbian
Before European contact, Native American cultures are divided into four lengthy archeological time periods: PaleoPaleo
Paleo, aka David Strackany, is an American singer of folk music who is notable for writing a song every day for 365 days using a "half-size children's guitar" while living out of his car and being essentially homeless...
, Archaic, Woodland
Woodland period
The Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures was from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic header for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the...
and Mississippian
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
.
The Mississippian culture, lasting from 800 to 1500 AD, developed urban societies, distinguished by their construction of truncated earthwork
Earthworks (archaeology)
In archaeology, earthwork is a general term to describe artificial changes in land level. Earthworks are often known colloquially as 'lumps and bumps'. Earthworks can themselves be archaeological features or they can show features beneath the surface...
pyramid mounds, or platform mound
Platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity.-Eastern North America:The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period...
s; as well as their hierarchical chiefdom
Chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...
s; intensive village-based horticulture
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
, which enabled the development of more dense populations; and creation of ornate copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, shell and mica
Mica
The mica group of sheet silicate minerals includes several closely related materials having highly perfect basal cleavage. All are monoclinic, with a tendency towards pseudohexagonal crystals, and are similar in chemical composition...
paraphernalia adorned with a series of motifs known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from...
(SECC). The largest Mound Builder sites surviving in present-day Georgia are Kolomoki
Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park
The Kolomoki Mounds are the largest and oldest Woodland period mound complex in the Southeastern United States and currently stand in present day Early County, Georgia, near the Chattahoochee River. The mounds were named a National Historic Landmark in 1964...
in Early County
Early County, Georgia
Early County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. It was created on December 15, 1818 and was named for Peter Early. As of 2010, the population is 11,008. The county seat is Blakely.-Geography:...
, Etowah
Etowah Indian Mounds
Etowah Indian Mounds is a archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia south of Cartersville, in the United States. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000–1550 CE, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River. Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site is a designated...
in Bartow County, and Ocmulgee National Monument
Ocmulgee National Monument
Ocmulgee National Monument preserves traces of over ten millennia of Southeastern Native American culture, including major earthworks built more than 1,000 years ago by Mississippian culture peoples: the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches...
in Macon
Macon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
.
European exploration
At the time of European colonization of the AmericasEuropean colonization of the Americas
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
, the historic Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
and Muskogean-speaking Creek and Yamasee
Yamasee
The Yamasee were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans that lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida.-History:...
Indians lived in what is now Georgia. The Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
spread southward along the Ridge and Valley Appalachians, occupying lands reaching to the upper Chattahoochee
Chattahoochee River
The Chattahoochee River flows through or along the borders of the U.S. states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers and emptying into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of...
, which formed the southern boundary of their lands, stretching all the way to the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
.
The Creek or Muscogee were a loose confederation of tribes descended from the Mississippian culture
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
people. They were divided between the Lower Creeks along the Ocmulgee
Ocmulgee River
The Ocmulgee River is a tributary of the Altamaha River, approximately 255 mi long, in the U.S. state of Georgia...
, Flint
Flint River (Georgia)
The Flint River is a river in the U.S. state of Georgia. The river drains of western Georgia, flowing south from the upper Piedmont region south of Atlanta to the wetlands of the Gulf Coastal Plain in the southwestern corner of the state. Along with the Apalachicola and the Chattahoochee rivers,...
and the lower Chattahoochee
Chattahoochee River
The Chattahoochee River flows through or along the borders of the U.S. states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers and emptying into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of...
rivers, and the more remote Upper Creeks along the Coosa
Coosa River
The Coosa River is a tributary of the Alabama River in the U.S. states of Alabama and Georgia. The river is about long altogether.The Coosa River is one of Alabama's most developed rivers...
and Alabama
Alabama River
The Alabama River, in the U.S. state of Alabama, is formed by the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers, which unite about north of Montgomery.The river flows west to Selma, then southwest until, about from Mobile, it unites with the Tombigbee, forming the Mobile and Tensaw rivers, which discharge into...
rivers. The Yamasee occupied the coastal areas along the Savannah River
Savannah River
The Savannah River is a major river in the southeastern United States, forming most of the border between the states of South Carolina and Georgia. Two tributaries of the Savannah, the Tugaloo River and the Chattooga River, form the northernmost part of the border...
.
Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named...
may have sailed along the coast during his exploration of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. In 1526, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón
Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón was a Spanish explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the first European attempt at a settlement in what is now the continental United States...
attempted to establish a colony on an island, possibly near St. Catherines Island
St. Catherines Island
St. Catherines Island, also known as Santa Catalina, is one of the Sea Islands or Golden Isles on the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia, 50 miles south of Savannah in Liberty County. The island is ten miles long and from one to three miles wide, located between St. Catherine's Sound and Sapelo...
.
The French founded the colonial settlement of Charlesfort in 1562 on Parris Island, when Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault 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...
and his party of French Huguenots settled an area in the Port Royal Sound
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...
area of present-day South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
. Within a year the colony failed. Most of the colonists followed René Goulaine de Laudonnière
René Goulaine de Laudonnière
René Goulaine de Laudonnière was a French Huguenot explorer and the founder of the French colony of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida...
south and founded a new outpost called Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated by the...
in present-day Florida .
Over the next few decade
Decade
A decade is a period of 10 years. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek dekas which means ten. This etymology is sometime confused with the Latin decas and dies , which is not correct....
s, a number of Spanish explorers from Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
visited the inland
Inland
Inland is an area of land away from the coast or shore line. It usually refers to the interior part of a country or region.Inland may refer to:* Inland Fräkne Hundred, a hundred of Bohuslän in Sweden...
region of present-day Georgia. The local Mississippian culture, described by Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto (explorer)
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, was the first European documented to have crossed the Mississippi River....
in 1540, had completely disappeared by 1560. The people may have succumbed to new infectious diseases introduced by the Europeans.
English fur traders from the Province of Carolina
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina, originally chartered in 1629, was an English and later British colony of North America. Because the original Heath charter was unrealized and was ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, in 1663...
first encountered the Lower Creeks in 1690. The English established a fort at Ocmulgee
Ocmulgee National Monument
Ocmulgee National Monument preserves traces of over ten millennia of Southeastern Native American culture, including major earthworks built more than 1,000 years ago by Mississippian culture peoples: the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches...
. There they traded iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
tools, guns, cloth, and rum for deerskins and Indian slaves captured by warring tribes in regular raids.
British colony
The conflict between Spain and Great Britain
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
over control of Georgia began in earnest in about 1670, when the British colony of South Carolina
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina, originally chartered in 1629, was an English and later British colony of North America. Because the original Heath charter was unrealized and was ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, in 1663...
was founded just north of the missionary provinces of Guale
Guale
Guale was an historic Native American chiefdom 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 16th century. During the late 17th century and early 18th century, Guale society was shattered...
and Mocama
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 territory extended from about the Altamaha River in...
, part of Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
. Guale and Mocama, today part of Georgia, lay between Carolina's capital, Charles Town
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
, and Spanish Florida's capital, St. Augustine
St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United...
. They were subjected to repeated military invasions by both sides.
The Spanish mission system was permanently destroyed by 1704. The coast of future Georgia was occupied by British-allied Yamasee
Yamasee
The Yamasee were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans that lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida.-History:...
Indians until they were decimated in the Yamasee War
Yamasee War
The Yamasee War was a conflict between British settlers of colonial South Carolina and various Native American Indian tribes, including the Yamasee, Muscogee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaw, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and...
of 1715–1717. The surviving Yamasee fled to Florida, leaving the coast of Georgia depopulated, making formation of a new British colony possible. A few defeated Yamasee remained and later became known as the Yamacraw
Yamacraw
The Yamacraw were a Native American tribe which settled parts of Georgia, specifically around the future site of the city of Savannah.- History :...
.
English settlement began in the early 1730s after James Oglethorpe
James Oglethorpe
James Edward Oglethorpe was a British general, member of Parliament, philanthropist, and founder of the colony of Georgia...
, a Member of Parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
, promoted the area be colonized with the worthy poor of England, to provide an alternative to the overcrowded debtors' prisons. Oglethorpe and other English philanthropists secured a royal charter
Royal Charter
A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organizations such as cities or universities. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and...
as the Trustees of the colony of Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
on June 9, 1732. It is commonly known Georgia was founded as a debtor or penal colony persists due to the numerous English convicts who were sentenced to transportation to Georgia. With the motto, "Not for ourselves, but for others," the Trustees selected colonists for Georgia. On February 12, 1733, the first settlers arrived in the ship Anne, at what was to become the city of Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
.
In 1742 the colony was invaded by Spanish forces
Invasion of Georgia (1742)
The 1742 Invasion of Georgia saw a Spanish military force invade and attempt to occupy the British colony of Georgia as part of the War of Jenkins' Ear. Local British forces under the command of the Governor James Oglethorpe rallied and defeated the Spaniards at the Battle of Bloody Marsh and the...
during the War of Jenkins' Ear
War of Jenkins' Ear
The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742. Its unusual name, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1858, relates to Robert Jenkins, captain of a British merchant ship, who exhibited his severed ear in...
. Oglethorpe mobilized local forces and defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh
Battle of Bloody Marsh
The Battle of Bloody Marsh took place on July 18, 1742 between Spanish and British forces, and the latter were victorious. Part of the War of Jenkin's Ear, the battle was for control of the road between the British forts of Frederica and St. Simons, to control St. Simons Island and the forts'...
. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748)
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748 ended the War of the Austrian Succession following a congress assembled at the Imperial Free City of Aachen—Aix-la-Chapelle in French—in the west of the Holy Roman Empire, on 24 April 1748...
, 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 South Carolina
South Carolina Low Country
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region located along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands...
demonstrated, slaves were more profitable than other forms of labor available to colonists. Improving economic conditions in Europe led to fewer whites being willing to immigrate as indentured servants. In addition, many of the whites suffered high mortality rates from the climate and diseases of the Low Country.
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. Some historians have surmised that the Africans had the knowledge and material techniques to build the elaborate earthworks of dams, banks, and irrigation systems throughout the Low Country that supported rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
and indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
cultivation; Georgia planters imported slaves chiefly from rice-growing regions of present-day Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
, the Gambia
The Gambia
The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....
and Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
. 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.
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 Low Country
South Carolina Low Country
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region located along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands...
. Planters had higher rates of absenteeism from their large coastal plantations. They often took their families to the hills during the summer, the "sick season", when the Low Country had high rates of disease.
The pacing and development of large plantations made the Georgia coast society more like that of the West Indies than of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. There was a higher proportion of African-born slaves, and Africans who came from closely related regions. The slaves of the 'Rice Coast' of South Carolina and Georgia developed the unique Gullah
Gullah
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....
or Geechee culture (the latter term more common in Georgia), in which important parts of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n linguistic, religious and cultural heritage were preserved. This culture developed throughout the Low Country and Sea Islands, where enslaved African Americans later worked at cotton plantations. African-American influence was strong on 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
Great Britain in the Seven Years War
The Kingdom of Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War which lasted between 1756 and 1763. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power having gained a number of new territories at the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and established itself as the...
– as the colony was located a long distance from Canada and the French-allied Indians. However, in 1762 Georgia was believed to be under threat from 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 (1763)
The Treaty of Paris, often called the Peace of Paris, or the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763, by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement. It ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War...
. During this period the Cherokee Rebellion began.
Governor Wright wrote in 1766 that Georgia had
(Saye p 135)
"No manufactures of the least consequence: a trifling quantity of coarse homespun cloth, wool [sic] and 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."
American Revolution
Royal governor James WrightJames Wright (governor)
James Wright was an American colonial lawyer and jurist who was the last British Royal Governor of the Province of Georgia. He was the only Royal Governor of the Thirteen Colonies to regain control of his colony during the American Revolutionary War.James Wright was born in London to Robert 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 in the United States
Republicanism is the political value system that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and inalienable rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, supports activist government to promote the common good, rejects...
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
"No taxation without representation" is a slogan originating during the 1750s and 1760s that summarized a primary grievance of the British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, which was one of the major causes of the American Revolution...
" 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
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...
. Georgians knew their remote coastal location made them vulnerable.
In August 1774 at a general meeting in Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, 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
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
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 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. (There never was a Georgia declaration of independence.) Georgia was no longer a colony; it was a state with a weak chief executive, the "President and Commander-in-Chief," who was elected by the Congress for a term of only six months. Archibald Bulloch
Archibald Bulloch
Archibald Bulloch was a lawyer, soldier, and statesman from Georgia during the American Revolution.-Early life:...
, 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
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
was captured by British and Loyalist
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
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
Augusta, Georgia
Augusta is a consolidated city in the U.S. state of Georgia, located along the Savannah River. As of the 2010 census, the Augusta–Richmond County population was 195,844 not counting the unconsolidated cities of Hephzibah and Blythe.Augusta is the principal city of the Augusta-Richmond County...
. At the Siege of Savannah
Siege of Savannah
The Siege of Savannah or the Second Battle of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War in 1779. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia, had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. The siege itself consisted of a joint...
in 1779, American and French troops (the latter including a company of free blacks
Gens de couleur
Gens de couleur is a French term meaning "people of color." The term was commonly used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery, where it was a short form of gens de couleur libres ....
from Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
) 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 [removal] of 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."
Georgia ratified the U.S. Constitution on January 2, 1788.
The original eight counties of Georgia were Burke
Burke County, Georgia
Burke County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population was 22,243. The 2007 Census Estimate showed a population of 22,754...
, Camden
Camden County, Georgia
Camden County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is one of the original counties of Georgia, created February 5, 1777. As of 2000, the population was 43,664. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 48,689. The county seat is Woodbine.-History:The first European to land...
, Chatham
Chatham County, Georgia
Chatham County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. The county seat and largest city is Savannah. In the official US Census of 2010, Chatham County had a total population of 265,128 . Chatham is the most populous Georgia county outside the Atlanta metropolitan area...
, Effingham
Effingham County, Georgia
Effingham County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. In the United States Census of 2000, the population was 37,535. The Census Bureau's 2008 estimate estimates that this figure has grown to 52,060. The seat of Effingham County is Springfield....
, Glynn
Glynn County, Georgia
Glynn County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population was 67,568. The 2008 Census Estimate showed a population of 75,884...
, Liberty
Liberty County, Georgia
Liberty County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population was 61,610. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 60,503...
, Richmond
Richmond County, Georgia
Richmond County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is one of the original counties of Georgia, created February 5, 1777. As of 2010, the population was 200,549. The 2007 Census Estimate showed a population of 199,486....
and Wilkes
Wilkes County, Georgia
Wilkes County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population was 10,687. The 2007 Census estimate shows a population of 10,262. The county seat is the city of Washington. Referred to as "Washington-Wilkes", the county seat and county are commonly treated as a...
. Before these counties were created in 1777, Georgia had been divided into local government units called parishes.
Antebellum period
In 1787, the Treaty of BeaufortTreaty 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...
established the eastern boundary of Georgia as the Savannah River
Savannah River
The Savannah River is a major river in the southeastern United States, forming most of the border between the states of South Carolina and Georgia. Two tributaries of the Savannah, the Tugaloo River and the Chattooga River, form the northernmost part of the border...
, to Tugalo Lake. Twelve to fourteen miles of land (inhabited at the time by the Cherokee Nation
Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
) 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
Mississippi Territory
The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from April 7, 1798, until December 10, 1817, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Mississippi....
created from part of Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
in 1798. 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 boundary between Georgia and South Carolina at the Chattooga River
Chattooga River
The Chattooga River is the main tributary of the Tugaloo River. Its headwaters are located southwest of Cashiers, North Carolina, and it stretches to where it has its confluence with the Tallulah River within Lake Tugalo, held back by the Tugalo Dam...
, proceeding northwest from the lake.
In 1794, Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
, a Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
-born artisan residing in Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, patented sac cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
, mechanizing cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
production. The Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
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
King Cotton was a slogan used by southerners to support secession from the United States by arguing cotton exports would make an independent Confederacy economically prosperous, and—more important—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy because their industrial economy...
quickly came to dominate Georgia and the other southern states. Although Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
banned the slave trade in 1808, Georgia's slave population continued to grow with the importation of slaves from the plantations of the South Carolina Low Country
South Carolina Low Country
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region located along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands...
and Chesapeake
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
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.
Slaves worked the fields in large cotton plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s, and the economy of the state became dependent on the institution of slavery. Requiring little cultivation and easy to transport, cotton proved ideally suited to the inland frontier. The lower Piedmont
Piedmont (United States)
The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the eastern United States between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south. The Piedmont province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division...
or 'Black Belt' counties – comprising the middle third of the state and initially named for the regions distinctively dark and fertile soil – became the site of the largest and most productive cotton plantations.
In 1829, gold was discovered in the north Georgia mountains, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush
Georgia Gold Rush
The Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States. It started in 1828 in the present day Lumpkin County near county seat Dahlonega, and soon spread through the North Georgia mountains, following the Georgia Gold Belt. By the early 1840s, gold became harder to find...
, the first gold rush
Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...
in U.S. history. A Federal mint was established in Dahlonega, Georgia
Dahlonega, Georgia
Dahlonega is a city in Lumpkin County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 5,242....
and continued to operate until 1861. An influx of white settlers pressured the U.S. government to take the land away from the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
Indians. They owned land, operated their own government with a written constitution, and did not recognize the authority of the state of Georgia.
Please note: In reference to Georgia being the first "gold rush" in U.S. history see wiki pages: "Gold Rush," and "Georgia Gold Rush," both of which state that it was the second gold rush in the U.S. The first having been in North Carolina in 1799,according to other wiki pages.
The dispute culminated in the Indian Removal Act
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the Five Civilized Tribes. In particular, Georgia, the largest state at that time, was involved in...
of 1830, under which all eastern tribes were sent west to Indian reservations in present-day Oklahoma. In Worcester v. Georgia
Worcester v. Georgia
Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Samuel Worcester and held that the Georgia criminal statute that prohibited non-Indians from being present on Indian lands without a license from the state was unconstitutional.The...
, the Supreme Court in 1832 ruled that states were not permitted to redraw the boundaries of Indian lands, but President Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin van Buren
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....
dispatched federal troops to round up the Cherokee and deport them west of the Mississippi
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
. This forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830...
led to the death of over 4,000 Cherokees.
Growth continued in the Black Belt region. By 1860, the slave population in the Black Belt was three times greater than that of the coastal counties, where rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
remained the principal crop. The upper Piedmont
Piedmont (United States)
The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the eastern United States between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south. The Piedmont province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division...
was settled mainly by white yeoman farmers of English descent. While there were also many smaller cotton plantations, the proportion of slaves was lower in north Georgia than in the coastal
Gullah
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....
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.
The proportion of slaves in Georgia was quite big since the cotton is most efficiently grown on large plantations with many slaves rather than on small family farms. The Sokoloff/Engerman (SE) hypothesis predicts that cotton producers with large slave plantations will have a restrictive franchise which has a wealth or literacy requirement for voting. That’s a factor to induce Georgia into Civil War as Southern party to keep their elite rights.
Education
At first, there were no public secondary schools although there were numerous private and religious schools, especially for the elite. The University of Georgia (first named Franklin College, after Benjamin Franklin) claims to be the oldest land grant college in the U.S. 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 students. A study of women's signatures indicates a high degree of literacy in areas with schools. Georgia's early promise faded after 1800, and indeed the entire rural South had limited schooling until after 1900. Upscale Georgians sent 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 CollegeAgnes Scott College
Agnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....
.
Civil War
On January 18, 1861 Georgia seceded from the Union, keeping the name "State of Georgia" and joining the newly formed ConfederacyConfederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
in February.
Military history
During the war, Georgia sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to battle, mostly to the armies in Virginia. The state switched from cotton to food production, but severe transportation difficulties because of underdeveloped roads and railroads restricted movement of supplies. Thinking the state safe from invasion, the Confederates built small munitions factories. For similar reasons,The first major battle in Georgia was a Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga
Battle of Chickamauga
The Battle of Chickamauga, fought September 19–20, 1863, marked the end of a Union offensive in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia called the Chickamauga Campaign...
in 1863—it was the last major Confederate victory in the west. In 1864, William T. Sherman's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign
Atlanta Campaign
The Atlanta Campaign was a series of battles fought in the Western Theater of the American Civil War throughout northwest Georgia and the area around Atlanta during the summer of 1864. Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May...
. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston
Joseph E. Johnston
Joseph Eggleston Johnston was a career U.S. Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars, and was also one of the most senior general officers in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
fought a series of delaying battles, the largest being the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
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 Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E...
, as he tried to delay as long as possible by retreating toward Atlanta. Johnston's replacement, Gen. John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Hood had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness...
attempted several unsuccessful counterattacks at the Battle of Peachtree Creek
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 B. Hood since taking command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. The attack was against Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's...
and the Battle of Atlanta
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 center of Atlanta, Union forces commanded by William T. Sherman overwhelmed...
, but Sherman captured the city on September 2, 1864.
After the loss of Atlanta, Governor Brown
Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...
withdrew the state's militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army.
Sherman's March
After burning Atlanta to the ground, Sherman embarked on his March to the SeaSherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...
on November 15, en route to Milledgeville
Milledgeville, Georgia
Milledgeville is a city in and the county seat of Baldwin County in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is northeast of Macon, located just before Eatonton on the way to Athens along U.S. Highway 441, and it is located on the Oconee River. The relatively rapid current of the Oconee here made this an...
, the state capital, which he reached on November 23, and the port city of Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, which he entered on December 22. His army destroyed a swath of land about 60 miles (96.6 km) across in this campaign, less than 10% of the state. Once Sherman's army passed through, the Confederates regained control. The March is a major part of the state's folk history. The crisis was the setting for Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...
's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...
and the subsequent 1939 film
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
. One of the last land battles of the Civil War, the Battle of Columbus, Georgia
Battle of Columbus, Georgia
The Battle of Columbus, Georgia , also known as the Battle of Girard, Alabama is widely regarded to be the last battle of the American Civil War...
, was fought on the Georgia-Alabama border.
The memory of Sherman's March became iconic and central to the "Myth of the Lost Cause
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to an American literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the U.S. South to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War of 1861–1865...
." Most important were many "salvation stories" that tell not what Yankee soldiers destroyed, but what was saved by the quick thinking and crafty women on the home front, or perhaps was saved by a Northerners' appreciation of the beauty of homes and the charm of Southern women.
Hardships
Food shortages became increasingly severe during the war, especially in urban areas. Poor women took matters in their own hands in more than two dozen episodes across the state when they raided stores and captured supply wagons to get such necessities as bacon, corn, flour, and cotton yarn.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 severe lack of supplies, food, water, and medicine. In the 15 months the Andersonville prison camp existed, 45,000 Union soldiers were held here; at least 13,000 died from disease, malnutrition, starvation, or exposure. At its height, the death rate reached over 100 persons per day. After the war, the camp's commanding officer, Captain Henry WirzHenry Wirz
Heinrich Hartmann Wirz better known as Henry Wirz was a Confederate officer in the American Civil War...
, became the first Confederate to be tried and executed as a war criminal.
Reconstruction
At the beginning of the Reconstruction, Georgia had over 460,000 freedmen. Slaves had been 44% of the state's population in 1860.In January 1865, William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate abandoned plantations in the Sea Islands
Sea Islands
The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the United States. They number over 100, and are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of the U.S...
and redistribute land in smaller plots to former slaves, so that they might get a stake in life. Later that year after succeeding Lincoln in the presidency, Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
revoked the order and returned the plantations to their former owners.
After the Civil War, many blacks moved from rural areas to Atlanta to take part in rebuilding the city and railroads, have freedom from the plantation counties, and to set up their own communities. Others migrated away from plantations to towns and worked to reunite their families.
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
's decision to restore the former Confederate states to the Union without requirements for change to reflect the outcome of the war was criticized by Radical Republicans in Congress. In March 1867, they passed the First Reconstruction Act to place the South under temporary military occupation to help manage the transition to citizenship of freedmen. Along with Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, Georgia was included in the Third Military District, under the command of General John Pope
John Pope (military officer)
John Pope was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He had a brief but successful career in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in the East.Pope was a graduate of the United States Military Academy in...
.
To try to ensure the election of loyal governments, Radical Republicans passed an act requiring ex-Confederates to take an ironclad oath
Ironclad oath
The Ironclad Oath was a key factor in the removing of ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction of the United States in the 1860s...
of loyalty or be prevented from voting or holding office for a few years. They were replaced in southern legislatures by a coalition of newly enfranchised freedmen, Northerners (who were called carpetbaggers), and Southerners who were for the Union, also disparagingly called scalawags. The latter were mostly former Whigs
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
who had opposed secession.
In January 1868, Charles Jenkins
Charles J. Jenkins
Charles Jones Jenkins was a politician from Georgia, U.S..-Biography:Jenkins was born in South Carolina. His family moved to Jefferson County, Georgia, and Jenkins attended the University of Georgia in Athens at a young age; his exact dates of attendance are not known...
, Georgia's first governor elected after the end of the war, refused to authorize state funds for a racially integrated state constitutional convention. Pope's successor General George Meade dissolved Jenkins' government and replaced it with a military governor to ensure the constitutional convention was held representing all citizens.
This action outraged many white conservatives, already opposed to the Republican administration. Some were already engaged in organized political terrorism and others joined such insurgent paramilitary groups. The Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, Nathan Bedford Forrest
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar years...
, visited Atlanta several times in 1868 to help organize the Klan in Georgia. Political violence increased in the state against freedmen and their allies. The 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 of 1868.
In July 1868, the newly elected General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
; a Republican governor, Rufus Bullock
Rufus Bullock
Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician.-Biography:He served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After various allegations of scandal, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship...
, was inaugurated, and Georgia was readmitted to the Union. The state's Democrats, including former Confederate leaders Robert Toombs
Robert Toombs
Robert Augustus Toombs was an American political leader, United States Senator from Georgia, 1st Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a Confederate general in the Civil War.-Early life:...
and Howell Cobb
Howell Cobb
Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A Southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851...
, convened in Atlanta to denounce Reconstruction. Theirs was described as the largest mass rally of whites held in Georgia. In September, white Republicans joined with the Democrats in expelling the thirty-two black legislators from the General Assembly. A week later in the southwest Georgia town of Camilla
Camilla, Georgia
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,669 people, 1,994 households, and 1,405 families residing in the city. The population density was 929.4 people per square mile . There were 2,128 housing units at an average density of 348.9 per square mile...
, white residents attacked a black Republican rally and killed twelve men.
In 1868, Georgia became the first state in the South to implement the convict lease
Convict lease
Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States, beginning with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, peaking around 1880, and ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928....
system. It made money by leasing out the overwhelmingly black prison population to work for private businesses and citizens. The work force was unprotected and did not receive any income. Railroad companies, mines, turpentine distilleries and other manufacturers, in essence, used unpaid convict labor to hasten industrialization. While the entities employing convicts were legally obliged to provide humane treatment, widespread reports that leased convicts were being overworked, brutally whipped, and killed were completely ignored. Georgia’s incipient capitalists reaped huge profits from this system. The greatest beneficiary was Joseph E. Brown
Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...
, whose railroads, coal mines and iron works were all dependent on convict labor. (See next section.)
As whites tried to reestablish social and political dominance in a changed labor market in the midst of a severe agricultural depression, militia and lynch-mob violence directed against freedmen and their allies rose in Georgia and other Confederate states. It was continuation of the Civil War by other means.
These developments led many to call for return of Georgia to military rule, to ensure protection of citizens. Georgia was one of only two ex-Confederate states to vote against Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
in the presidential election of 1868. In March 1869 the state legislature defeated ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.
The same month the U.S. Congress again barred Georgia's representatives from their seats because of election fraud and inequities. This caused the re-imposition of military rule in December 1869. In January 1870, Gen. Alfred H. Terry, the final commanding general of the Third District, purged the General Assembly's of ex-Confederates. He replaced them with the Republican runners-up and reinstated the expelled black legislators. This created a large Republican majority in the legislature.
In February 1870 the newly constituted legislature ratified the Fifteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...
and chose new Senators to send to Washington. On July 15, Georgia became the last former Confederate state readmitted into the Union. The Democrats subsequently won commanding majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. Under their threat of impeachment, the last Republican governor Rufus Bullock
Rufus Bullock
Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician.-Biography:He served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After various allegations of scandal, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship...
fled the state.
Postbellum economic growth
Milledgeville, Georgia
Milledgeville is a city in and the county seat of Baldwin County in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is northeast of Macon, located just before Eatonton on the way to Athens along U.S. Highway 441, and it is located on the Oconee River. The relatively rapid current of the Oconee here made this an...
was replaced by the inland rail terminus of Atlanta. Construction began on a new capitol building
Georgia State Capitol
The Georgia State Capitol, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, is an architecturally and historically significant building. It has been named a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the main office building of Georgia's government...
, which was completed by 1889. The population of Atlanta increased rapidly.
Post-Reconstruction Georgia was dominated by the 'Bourbon
Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States from 1876 to 1904 to refer to a member of the Democratic Party, conservative or classical liberal, especially one who supported President Grover Cleveland in 1884–1888/1892–1896 and Alton B. Parker in 1904. After 1904, the Bourbons faded away...
Triumvirate' of Joseph E. Brown
Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...
, Gen. John B. Gordon and Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt
Alfred H. Colquitt
Alfred Holt Colquitt was a lawyer, preacher, soldier, 49th Governor of Georgia and two term U.S. Senator from Georgia where he died in office. He served as an officer in the Confederate army, reaching the rank of major general....
. Between 1872 and 1890, either Brown or Gordon held one of Georgia's Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
seats, Colquitt held the other, and, in the major part of that period, either Colquitt
Alfred H. Colquitt
Alfred Holt Colquitt was a lawyer, preacher, soldier, 49th Governor of Georgia and two term U.S. Senator from Georgia where he died in office. He served as an officer in the Confederate army, reaching the rank of major general....
or Gordon occupied the Governor's office. With their appeals to white supremacy, the Democrats effectively monopolized state politics. Colquitt
Alfred H. Colquitt
Alfred Holt Colquitt was a lawyer, preacher, soldier, 49th Governor of Georgia and two term U.S. Senator from Georgia where he died in office. He served as an officer in the Confederate army, reaching the rank of major general....
represented the old planter class; Brown
Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...
, head of Western & Atlantic Railroad and one of the states first millionaires, represented the New South
New South
New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a phrase that has been used intermittently since the American Civil War to describe the American South, after 1877. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South of the plantation system of the antebellum period.The term has been used...
businessmen. Gordon was neither a planter nor a successful businessman, but proved the most skilled politician.
A general in the Army of Northern Virginia
Army of Northern Virginia
The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, as well as the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most often arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac...
who led the fabled last charge at Appomattox
Appomattox Court House
The Appomattox Courthouse is the current courthouse in Appomattox, Virginia built in 1892. It is located in the middle of the state about three miles northwest of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, once known as Clover Hill - home of the original Old Appomattox Court House...
, Brown was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
in Georgia. He was the first former Confederate to serve in the U.S. Senate. There he helped write the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
that ended Reconstruction. A native of northwest Georgia, his popularity impeded the growth of the 'mountain Republicanism' prevalent throughout southern Appalachia
Appalachia
Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...
, where slavery had been uncommon and resentment against the planter class widespread.
During the Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
, Georgia recovered from the devastation of the Civil War and had unprecedented economic growth based in part on development of resources. One of the most enduring products came about in reaction to the age's excesses. In 1885, when Atlanta and Fulton County
Fulton County, Georgia
Fulton County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat is Atlanta, the state capital since 1868 and the principal county of the Atlanta metropolitan area...
enacted prohibition
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
legislation, a local pharmacist, John Pemberton
John Pemberton
John Stith Pemberton was a Confederate veteran and an American druggist, and is best known for being the inventor of Coca-Cola.-Early life:...
invented a new drink. Two years later, after he sold the drink to Asa Candler who promoted it, Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
became the state's most famous product.
Henry W. Grady
Henry W. Grady
Henry Woodfin Grady was a journalist and orator who helped reintegrate the states of the former Confederacy into the Union after the American Civil War....
, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, emerged as the leading spokesman of the 'New South
New South
New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a phrase that has been used intermittently since the American Civil War to describe the American South, after 1877. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South of the plantation system of the antebellum period.The term has been used...
'. He promoted sectional reconciliation and the region's place in a rapidly industrializing nation. The International Cotton Exposition of 1881
International Cotton Exposition (1881)
International Cotton Exposition was a World's Fair held in Atlanta, Georgia from October 5 to December 3 of 1881.hThe location was along the Western & Atlantic Railroad tracks near the present day King Plow development...
and the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895
Cotton States and International Exposition (1895)
The 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition was held at the current Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. It is most remembered for the speech given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 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, Georgia
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Muscogee County, Georgia, United States, with which it is consolidated. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 189,885. It is the principal city of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, which, in 2009, had an estimated population of 292,795...
and Atlanta, as well as Graniteville
Graniteville, South Carolina
Graniteville is an unincorporated community in Aiken County, South Carolina, United States. It lies along U.S. 1, five miles west of Aiken. The town lies in Horse Creek Valley which originates in the nearby town of Vaucluse....
, on the Georgia-South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
border, into textile manufacturing centers.
Due to Georgia's relatively untapped virgin forests, particularly in the thinly populated pine barrens
Pine barrens
Pine barrens, pine plains, sand plains, or pinelands occur throughout the northeastern U.S. from New Jersey to Maine as well as the Midwest and Canada....
of the Atlantic Coastal Plain
Atlantic Coastal Plain
The Atlantic coastal plain has both low elevation and low relief, but it is also a relatively flat landform extending from the New York Bight southward to a Georgia/Florida section of the Eastern Continental Divide, which demarcates the plain from the ACF River Basin in the Gulf Coastal Plain to...
, logging became a major industry. It supported other new industries, most notably paper mill
Paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine or other type of paper machine.- History :...
s and turpentine
Turpentine
Turpentine is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, mainly pine trees. It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene...
distilling, which, by 1900, made Georgia the leading producer of naval stores. Also important were coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
, granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and kaolin mining, the latter used in the manufacture of paper, bricks and ceramic piping.
Even after the Democrats gained power, in the volatile 1880s and 1890s the number of lynchings of blacks grew steadily, reaching its height in 1899, when twenty-seven 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. This period corresponded to Georgia's disfranchisement of blacks and many poor whites through changes to its constitution and addition of such requirements as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency requirements. Political violence was used against blacks to reduce voting until they were disfranchised, a situation that prevailed for more than 60 years into the 20th century.
The Cotton States and International Exposition was famous as the occasion of Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
's Atlanta Compromise
Atlanta Compromise
The Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895...
. He urged blacks to focus their efforts, not on demands for social equality, but to improve their own conditions by becoming proficient in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic service. He proposed building a broad base within existing conditions. 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, strongly disagreed with Washington and denounced him for acquiescing to oppression. Du Bois, the most highly educated black man in America, in 1897 joined the faculty of Atlanta University
Clark Atlanta University
Clark Atlanta University is a private, historically black university in Atlanta, Georgia. It was formed in 1988 with the consolidation of Clark College and Atlanta University...
and taught there for several years. His experience and research in Georgia informed his famous book The Souls of Black Folk.
The black community mobilized quickly to get as much education as possible. Starting from having only a few schools before the Civil War, by the end of the century, the community had seen more than 30,000 teachers trained and put to work in schools across the South for African American children. Often rural schools in Georgia and other states were held only a few months a year because of demands to use children for labor, but parents tried their best. Teaching was highly regarded as a career and seen as a way for talented leaders, both men and women, to help their race.
Agrarian Rebellion and Disfranchisement
While Grady and other proponents of the New SouthNew South
New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a phrase that has been used intermittently since the American Civil War to describe the American South, after 1877. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South of the plantation system of the antebellum period.The term has been used...
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
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
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 were reduced to fledgling small farmers.
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. As cotton prices plummeted below production costs, by the 1890s, 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
Farmers' Alliance
The Farmers Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement amongst U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s. One of the goals of the organization was to end the adverse effects of the crop-lien system on farmers after the American Civil War...
, and in the 1890s with the Populist Party
Populist Party (United States)
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away...
. In 1892, Congressman Tom Watson
Thomas E. Watson
Thomas Edward "Tom" Watson was an American politician, newspaper editor, and writer from Georgia. In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the Populist Party, articulating an agrarian political viewpoint while attacking business, bankers, railroads, Democratic President Grover...
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
Free Silver
Free Silver was an important United States political policy issue in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Its advocates were in favor of an inflationary monetary policy using the "free coinage of silver" as opposed to the less inflationary Gold Standard; its supporters were called...
and bitterly opposed their desire for fusion with the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. They had faced death threats, mob violence and ballot-box stuffing to challenge the monopoly of their states' Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States from 1876 to 1904 to refer to a member of the Democratic Party, conservative or classical liberal, especially one who supported President Grover Cleveland in 1884–1888/1892–1896 and Alton B. Parker in 1904. After 1904, the Bourbons faded away...
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
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
's vice-president, but Bryan selected New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
industrialist Arthur Sewall
Arthur Sewall
Arthur Sewall was a U.S. Democratic politician from Maine most notable as William Jennings Bryan's first running mate in 1896. As the Populist Party nominee, Bryan had another running mate as well, Thomas E. Watson...
as a concession to Democratic leaders.
Watson
Thomas E. Watson
Thomas Edward "Tom" Watson was an American politician, newspaper editor, and writer from Georgia. In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the Populist Party, articulating an agrarian political viewpoint while attacking business, bankers, railroads, Democratic President Grover...
was not reelected. As the Populist Party disintegrated, through his periodical The Jeffersonian, Watson crusaded as a vigorous anti-Semite, anti-Catholic and white supremacist. He attacked the socialism
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
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.
Disfranchisement and court challenges
A former cabinet member in Grover ClevelandGrover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
'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
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
and the 1908 constitutional amendment that required a person to satisfy qualifications for literacy tests and property ownership for voting. Because a grandfather clause
Grandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...
was used to waive those requirements for most whites, the legislation effectively secured the disfranchisement 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, 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.
Continued litigation by people from Georgia and other states brought some relief, as in the overturning of the grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States
Guinn v. United States
Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 , was an important United States Supreme Court decision that dealt with provisions of state constitutions that set qualifications for voters. It found grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests to be unconstitutional...
(1915). White-dominated state legislatures and the state Democratic parties quickly responded by creating new barriers to expanded franchise, such as white-only primaries.
In 1934 Georgia passed legislation to impose a poll tax as a voting requirement, a provision upheld in the Supreme Court case of Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), a challenge 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
Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649 , was a very important decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Democratic Party's use of all-white primaries in Texas, and other states where the party used the...
banned white-only primaries, and in 1945 Georgia repealed its poll tax. Black civil rights groups, especially the All-Citizens Registration Committee (ACRC) of Atlanta, moved quickly to register African Americans. By 1947 they had managed to register 125,000 people, 18.8% of those of eligible age.
In 1958 the state passed legislation again making registration more restrictive, by requiring those who were illiterate to answer 20 of 30 questions posed. In rural counties such as Terrell, black voting registration was repressed. After the legislation, although the county was 64% black in population, only 48 blacks managed to register to vote.
All Georgia citizens would not gain full protection for voting again until the mid-1960s, after African-American leadership in the Civil Rights Movement gained passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Progressive era
The rapidly growing middle class of professionals, businessmen and educated worked to bring the Progressive EraProgressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
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 M. Terrell
Joseph Meriwether Terrell was a United States Senator and the 57th Governor of Georgia. Born in Greenville, he attended the common schools, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1882, commencing practice in Greenville....
(1902–07) and Hoke Smith
Hoke Smith
Michael Hoke Smith was a newspaper owner, United States Secretary of the Interior , 58th Governor of Georgia , and a United States Senator from Georgia.-Biography:...
. 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
Bleckley County, Georgia
Bleckley County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population is 11,666. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 12,306. The county seat is Cochran.- History :...
, 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's manufacturing and agriculture grew. The cotton industry benefited from the depredations of the boll weevilBoll weevil
The boll weevil is a beetle measuring an average length of six millimeters, which feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central America, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing areas by the 1920s,...
further west. In 1911, Georgia produced a record 2.8 million bales of cotton. Four years later, the boll weevil arrived in Georgia, and by 1921 reached such epidemic proportions that it destroyed 45% of the states' cotton crop. World War I drove cotton prices to a high of $1 a pound in 1919, but it 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 remains in the grip of Jim Crow and progress was too slow for many. Starting in 1910, and increasing as jobs began to open up during World War I, tens of thousands of African Americans migrated to northern industrial citiesGreat Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
for work, better education for their children, and the right to vote From 1910 to 1940 and in a second wave from the 1940s to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western industrial cities. They rapidly became urbanized and many built successful lives as industrial workers.
Prohibition
Prohibition was a central issue in local and state politics from the 1880s into the 1920s. Before the war preachers believed the solution to drunkenness was the religious revival that would turn the sinner into a teetolaling Christian. With the abolition of slavery the fear of black drunkenness became a new issue. The Drys, led by the ministers and the middle class women of the Woman's Christian Temperance UnionWoman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in...
and secured 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
Anti-Saloon League
The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. It was a key component of the Progressive Era, and was strongest in the South and rural North, drawing heavy support from pietistic Protestant ministers and their...
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 but it had with loopholes that allowed men to import whiskey from other states through the mail, and allowed saloons that supposedly sold only non-alcoholic drinks. The drys finally in 1915 passed an ironclad state law that effectively closed nearly all the liquor traffic. Illegal distilling and bootlegging continued, but most Georgians perforce turned to a new concoction invented in Atlanta, Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
. Asa Griggs Candler
Asa Griggs Candler
Asa Griggs Candler was an American business tycoon who made his fortune selling Coca-Cola. He also served as the 44th Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia from 1916 to 1919...
bought the cola company and with aggressive regional, national and international marketing turned it into one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the New South.
Women
Rebecca Latimer Felton (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 suffrage movements, endorsed lynching, fought for reform of prisons, and filled leadership roles in many reform organizations. In 1922 she served one day in the U.S. Senate—its first woman ever.Although middle class women in Atlanta 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 to reject it. Nevertheless the Amendment passed and Georgia women gained the right to vote in 1920; black women did not vote until the 1960s.
Social hatreds
Georgia horrified the nation with the notorious trial and lynching of Atlanta Jewish factory owner Leo FrankLeo Frank
Leo Max Frank was a Jewish-American factory superintendent whose hanging in 1915 by a lynch mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia drew attention to antisemitism in the United States....
, accused of raping and murdering a white Irish Catholic employee, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan. After appeals failed, a lynch mob murdered Frank in 1917. Ringleaders calling themselves 'The Knights of Mary Phagan' included prominent politicians, most notably former Governor Joseph Mackey Brown
Joseph Mackey Brown
Joseph Mackey Brown was an American politician and alleged to be one of the ringleaders in the lynching of Leo Frank...
. Publisher Watson
Thomas E. Watson
Thomas Edward "Tom" Watson was an American politician, newspaper editor, and writer from Georgia. In the 1890s Watson championed poor farmers as a leader of the Populist Party, articulating an agrarian political viewpoint while attacking business, bankers, railroads, Democratic President Grover...
played a leading role in instigating the violence with inflammatory newspaper coverage.
Added to rising social tensions from new immigration, urban migration and rapid change, the trial contributed to revival of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, refounded in a ceremony at Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock in Stone Mountain, Georgia, United States. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet amsl and 825 feet above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain granite extends underground at its longest point into Gwinnett County...
in November 1915. With Atlanta as its Imperial City, the Klan quickly grew to occupy a powerful role in state and municipal politics. Governor Clifford Walker
Clifford Walker
Clifford Mitchell Walker was an American attorney and politician from the Southern state of Georgia.Walker served consecutive two-year terms as the 64th Governor of Georgia from 1923 to 1927...
, who served from 1923 to 1927, was closely associated with the Klan. By the end of the decade, the organization suffered 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.
Great Depression
The state, Although still poor, was relatively prosperous in the 1910s as The price of cotton remained high, especially during world war. Low prices in the 1920s drag down the rural economy, and the entire state stagnated. Conditions became much worse after 1932, as cotton prices plunged from a high of $.35 a pound in 1919 to $.20 in the late 1920s, to as low as 6 cents in 1931 and 1932.The Great Depression
Great Depression in the United States
The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement...
Been hard times for both rural and urban Georgia, with farmers and blue-collar workers hit hardest.
Georgia benefited greatly by the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
, which raised cotton prices to $.11 or $.12 a pound, brought rural electrification, and set up a rural and urban work relief programs. Enacted during Roosevelt's first 100 days in office, the Agricultural Adjustment Act
Agricultural Adjustment Act
The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which restricted agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land and to kill off excess livestock...
paid farmers to plant less cotton to reduce supply. Between 1933 and 1940, the New Deal brought $250 million to Georgia. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Identified with The hardships of life and Georgia as he repeatedly returned to the 'Little White House
Little White House
The Little White House, in the Warm Springs Historic District in Warm Springs, Georgia, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal retreat. He first came to Warm Springs for treatment of his paralytic illness, and liked the area so much that, as Governor of New York, he had a home built on nearby...
' where he was treated for polio with the therapeutic waters of Warm Springs
Warm Springs, Georgia
Warm Springs is a city in Meriwether County, Georgia, United States. The population was 478 at the 2010 census.-History:Warm Springs first came to prominence in the 19th century as a spa town, due to its mineral springs which flow constantly at nearly 32 °C...
.
Roosevelt's proposals were popular among the Georgia congressional delegation, especially the Civilian Conservation Corps
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...
Which put young men on relief to work, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration which supported the price of cotton and peanuts, and the In the work relief programs that spread 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 Administration.
Georgia's powerful governor Eugene Talmadge
Eugene Talmadge
Eugene Talmadge was a Democratic politician who served two terms as the 67th Governor of Georgia from 1933 to 1937, and a third term from 1941 to 1943. Elected to a fourth term in 1946, he died before taking office...
(1933–37) disliked Roosevelt and the new deal. He was a former Agriculture Commissioner whose claims to be a 'real dirt farmer' won him the loyalty of his rural constituencies. Talmadge sought to subvert many New Deal programs. Appealing to white supremacy, he 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. In the 1936 election, Talmadge unsuccessfully attempted to run for the Senate, but lost to pro-New Deal incumbent Richard Russell, Jr.
Richard Russell, Jr.
Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. was a Democratic Party politician from the southeastern state of Georgia. He served as state governor from 1931 to 1933 and United States senator from 1933 to 1971....
. 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.
Although re-elected Governor in 1940, Talmadge suffered from a scandal caused by his firing of a dean of the University of Georgia system, on the grounds that he advocated racial equality. This led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is one of the six regional accreditation organizations recognized by the United States Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation...
to withdraw accreditation from the state's white colleges. In 1942, Talmadge was defeated in his bid for reelection. In 1946, he was reelected, in part by opposing a Federal court ruling that invalidated the white primary, but he died before taking office. The administration was often able to circumvent Talmadge's opposition by working with pro-New Deal politicians, most notably Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield
William B. Hartsfield
William Berry Hartsfield was an American politician. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and served as its 49th and 51st Mayor from 1937 to 1941 and again from 1942 to 1962, making him the longest-serving mayor in Atlanta history....
.
Wartime factory production during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
lifted Georgia's economy out of recession. Marietta
Marietta, Georgia
Marietta is a city located in central Cobb County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat.As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 56,579, making it one of metro Atlanta's largest suburbs...
's Bell Aircraft plant, the principal assembly site for the B-29 Superfortress
B-29 Superfortress
The B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing that was flown primarily by the United States Air Forces in late-World War II and through the Korean War. The B-29 was one of the largest aircraft to see service during World War II...
bomber, employed some 28,000 people at its peak, Robins Air Field
Robins Air Force Base
Robins Air Force Base is a major United States Air Force base located in Houston County, Georgia, United States. The base is located just east of and adjacent to the city of Warner Robins, Georgia, SSE of Macon, Georgia, and about SSE of Atlanta, Georgia...
near Macon
Macon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
employed some 13,000 civilians; Fort Benning
Fort Benning
Fort Benning is a United States Army post located southeast of the city of Columbus in Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties in Georgia and Russell County, Alabama...
became the world's largest infantry training school; and newly opened Fort Gordon
Fort Gordon
Fort Gordon, formerly known as Camp Gordon, is a United States Army installation established in 1917. It is the current home of the United States Army Signal Corps and Signal Center and was once the home of "The Provost Marshal General School" . The fort is located in Richmond, Jefferson, McDuffie,...
became a major deployment center. Shipyards in Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
and Brunswick
Brunswick, Georgia
Brunswick is the major urban and economic center in southeastern Georgia in the United States. The municipality is located on a harbor near the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 30 miles north of Florida and 70 miles south of South Carolina. Brunswick is bordered on the east by the Atlantic...
built many of the Liberty Ship
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
s used to transport materiel
Materiel
Materiel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
to the European 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
Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution limited the minimum voting age to no more than 18. It was adopted in response to student activism against the Vietnam War and to partially overrule the Supreme Court's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell...
in 1971. (Three other states set the voting age at 19 or 20.) The same year, the Communicable Disease Center, later called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...
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. It precipitated another wave of urban migration of former sharecroppers and tenant farmers, chiefly to the urban Midwest, West
West
West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of east and is perpendicular to north and south.By convention, the left side of a map is west....
and Northeast
Northeast megalopolis
The Northeast megalopolis or Boston–Washington megalopolis is the heavily urbanized area of the United States stretching from the the northern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts to the southern suburbs of Washington, D.C. On a map, the region appears almost as a perfectly straight line. As of 2000,...
, but also to the state's own burgeoning urban centers. During the war, Atlanta's Candler Field
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport , known locally as Atlanta Airport, Hartsfield Airport, and Hartsfield–Jackson, is located seven miles south of the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States...
was the nation's busiest airport in terms of flight operation. Afterwards Mayor Hartsfield
William B. Hartsfield
William Berry Hartsfield was an American politician. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and served as its 49th and 51st Mayor from 1937 to 1941 and again from 1942 to 1962, making him the longest-serving mayor in Atlanta history....
lobbied successfully to make the city a hub of commercial air travel, based on its strategic location in relation to the nation's major population centers.
Civil Rights Movement
African-American men's military roles during WWII validated their citizenship and motivated their activism for civil rights after the war. Men had fought for a country that permitted Southern states to prevent them from voting and kept their children in substandard schools. In the postwar period, there was new movement for change. The 1946 African-American voting rights campaign in Atlanta represented a major break through. Black women played major roles in the All Citizen's Registration Committee and the NAACP's successful voter registration drive following the 1946 Supreme Court decision 'Smith' v. 'Allwright.' Finally, in the 1970s, the Black Women's Coalition of Atlanta began to reassert the role that women leaders played in the 1946 movement.In 1960 after waves of migration to the North, African Americans in Georgia declined to 28% of the state's population, a total of 1,122,596 people. Most of those of eligible voting age were still disfranchised. With Atlanta's leadership among educated, middle-class blacks, Georgia became an important battleground in the American Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
.
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
(1954) was denounced by Governor Marvin Griffin
Marvin Griffin
Samuel Marvin Griffin, Sr. was a politician from the US state of Georgia. He served as the 72nd Governor of Georgia from 1955 to 1959.-Early life:...
, who pledged to keep Georgia's schools segregated, "come hell or high water".
Atlanta-born and bred Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
minister Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
emerged as a national leader in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott,...
in 1955. The son of a minister, King earned a doctorate from Boston University and was part of the educated middle class that had developed in the strong African-American community of Atlanta. The success of the Montgomery boycott led to King's joining with others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
(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 congregations were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle.
In Georgia and elsewhere, tensions over social change broke out into violence. In 1958, a group called the 'Confederate Underground' bombed a Reform Jewish temple in Atlanta
Bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple
The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple, a Reform Jewish temple located on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, and known simply as "The Temple," was bombed in the early morning hours of October 12, 1958. An explosion of approximately fifty sticks of dynamite tore through the side wall of the...
in reaction to Jewish support of the Civil Rights Movement.
The SCLC led a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia
Albany, Georgia
Albany is a city in and the county seat of Dougherty County, Georgia, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. It is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia metropolitan area and the southwest part of the state. The population was 77,434 at the 2010 U.S. Census, making it the...
in 1961. Together with the local police chief's restraint from violence, this campaign's broad focus failed to achieve any dramatic victories. The Albany campaign taught King and the SCLC important lessons which they put to use in the more successful Birmingham campaign
Birmingham campaign
The Birmingham campaign was a strategic movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the unequal treatment that black Americans endured in Birmingham, Alabama...
of 1963–64 in Alabama. The leadership of King and his followers led national opinion to turn in favor of the moral position of activists' claiming common civil rights for all citizens. John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and his brother Bobby prepared and submitted a Civil Rights bill to Congress.
With the cause of African Americans' capturing the support of the nation, in 1964 President Johnson secured passage of the Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. The following year he secured passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which established protections for voting. African Americans throughout the South quickly registered to vote and began to re-enter the political process, but it took some years for Georgians to elect the first African American to Congress in the 20th century.
Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. testified before Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act, and Governor Carl Sanders
Carl Sanders
Carl Edward Sanders Sr. is an American politician who served as the 74th Governor of the state of Georgia from 1963 to 1967.Sanders was born in Augusta, Georgia and attended the University of Georgia on a football scholarship...
worked with the Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
administration to ensure the state's compliance. Ralph McGill
Ralph McGill
Ralph Emerson McGill , American journalist, was best known as the anti-segregationist editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. He won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1959....
, editor and syndicated columnist at the Atlanta Constitution, 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 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
won a majority of votes for president in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, in part because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. In 1968 arch-segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
won these three states when he ran as an Independent for the Presidency.
In 1966, Lester Maddox
Lester Maddox
Lester Garfield Maddox was an American politician who was the 75th Governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971....
was elected Governor of Georgia. He had gained fame by threatening African-American civil rights demonstrators who attempted to enter his public restaurant. He stubbornly agitated against integration. After the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Gov. Maddox refused to honor the Nobel Prize winner by allowing his body to lie in state at the capitol.
In 1969, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a successful lawsuit against the state that required integration of public schools. In 1970, newly elected Governor Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
declared in his inaugural address that the era of racial segregation had ended.
Passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) enabled African Americans to regain their suffrage and formal political participation. In 1972 Georgians elected Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young is an American politician, diplomat, activist and pastor from Georgia. He has served as Mayor of Atlanta, a Congressman from the 5th district, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
to Congress as the first African American since Reconstruction. He had been one of King
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
's lieutenants in the movement. In 1973, the city of Atlanta elected Maynard Jackson
Maynard Jackson
Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. was an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He served three terms, two consecutive terms from 1974 until 1982 and a third term from 1990 to 1994...
as its first African-American mayor.
Sun Belt growth and the New Right
In 1980, construction was completed on the William B. Hartsfield International AirportHartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport , known locally as Atlanta Airport, Hartsfield Airport, and Hartsfield–Jackson, is located seven miles south of the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States...
. The largest 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, anti-union Right-to-work
Right-to-work law
Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. states, mostly in the southern or western U.S., allowed under provisions of the federal Taft–Hartley Act, which prohibit agreements between labor unions and employers that make membership, payment of union dues, or fees a condition of...
laws and lax corporate regulations, the Atlanta metropolitan area became a national center of finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
, insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
, and real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
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
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
selected Atlanta as the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics
1996 Summer Olympics
The 1996 Summer Olympics of Atlanta, officially known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially known as the Centennial Olympics, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States....
. Taking advantage of Atlanta's status as a transportation hub, in 1991 UPS
United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service, Inc. , typically referred to by the acronym UPS, is a package delivery company. Headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the...
established its headquarters in a suburb. In 1992, construction finished on Bank of America Plaza
Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta)
Bank of America Plaza is a skyscraper located in the SoNo district of Atlanta, Georgia. At the tower is the 53rd-tallest building in the world. When it first opened, it was the 9th tallest building in the world, and 6th tallest building in the United States...
, the tallest building in the U.S. outside New York or Chicago.
In reaction to the association of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
with civil rights legislation and Federal involvement on integration , Georgia, along with the rest of the formerly Democratic Solid South
Solid South
Solid South is the electoral support of the Southern United States for the Democratic Party candidates for nearly a century from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, to 1964, during the middle of the Civil Rights era....
, gradually shifted to support Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
s, first in presidential elections. Realignment was hastened by the turbulent one-term Presidency of native-son Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, the popularity of Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and organizational efforts of the Republican Party, and the growth of the Religious Right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
.
The Christian Coalition, whose leader, Ralph E. Reed, Jr.
Ralph E. Reed, Jr.
Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr., is a conservative American political activist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He sought the Republican nomination for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election on July 18, 2006,...
, had close ties to Georgia, mobilized evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
and fundamentalist Christian voters in support of Republican candidates during the 1994 midterm elections. Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....
, the acknowledged leader of the Republican Revolution
Republican Revolution
The Republican Revolution or Revolution of '94 is what the media dubbed Republican Party success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections, which resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and a pickup of eight seats in the Senate...
, was elected Speaker of the House. His seat represented the wealthy northern suburbs of Atlanta. Bob Barr
Bob Barr
Robert Laurence "Bob" Barr, Jr. is a former federal prosecutorand a former member of the United States House of Representatives. He represented Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Barr attained national prominence as one of the leaders of the impeachment of...
, another Georgia Republican Congressman, introduced the Defense of Marriage Act
Defense of Marriage Act
The Defense of Marriage Act is a United States federal law whereby the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. Under the law, no U.S. state may be required to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship considered a marriage in another state...
and led the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. Barr later switched his party affiliation to Libertarian
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...
and announced his intention to run for the U.S. presidency on May 12, 2008. On May 25, he was nominated at the Libertarian convention.
Georgia gained notoriety as a center of radical right-wing terrorism. During the 1996 Olympics, after the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
condemned the anti-homosexuality resolutions passed by suburban Cobb County
Cobb County, Georgia
Cobb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat and largest city is Marietta, which is located in the center of the county. The county was named for Thomas Willis Cobb, who in the early 19th century was a United States representative and senator from Georgia...
, Eric Robert Rudolph
Eric Robert Rudolph
Eric Robert Rudolph , also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is a criminal responsible for a series of bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured at least 150 others in the name of an anti-abortion and anti-gay agenda...
, a militant Christian fundamentalist detonated a bomb
Centennial Olympic Park bombing
The Centennial Olympic Park bombing was a terrorist bombing on July 27, 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States during the 1996 Summer Olympics, the first of four committed by Eric Robert Rudolph...
that killed one person and wounded 11. The following year, the Army of God
Army of God
Army of God is a Christian terrorist anti-abortion organization that sanctions the use of force to combat abortion in the United States. HBO produced a documentary on the Army Of God entitled Soldiers In The Army Of God.-Actions:...
, to which Rudolph was linked, bombed an Atlanta lesbian nightclub and an abortion clinic.
In this political climate, Georgia's leading Democrat, Governor Zell Miller
Zell Miller
Zell Bryan Miller is an American politician from the US state of Georgia. A Democrat, Miller served as Lieutenant Governor from 1975 to 1991, 79th Governor of Georgia from 1991 to 1999, and as United States Senator from 2000 to 2005....
(1990–99), shifted to the right. After being appointed to the Senate following the death of Coverdell in 2000, he emerged as a prominent ally of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
on the war in Iraq, Social Security privatization
Social Security debate (United States)
This article concerns proposals to change the Social Security system in the United States. Social Security is a social insurance program officially called "Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance" , in reference to its three components. It is primarily funded through a dedicated payroll tax...
, tax cuts, and opposition to gay marriage. He delivered a controversial keynote speech at the 2004 Republican convention where he endorsed Bush for reelection and denounced his Democratic Party colleagues. In 2002, Georgia elected Sonny Perdue
Sonny Perdue
George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue III, was the 81st Governor of Georgia. Upon his inauguration in January 2003, he became the first Republican governor of Georgia since Benjamin F. Conley served during Reconstruction in the 1870s....
, the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. He had campaigned against a controversial redesign of the state flag that removed the Confederate battle emblem.
See also
- History of the Southern United StatesHistory of the Southern United StatesThe history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America...
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 ISBN 1-56733-994-8. 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.
- Coleman, Kenneth. Confederate Athens, 1861–1865 University of Georgia Press, 1967; the city of Athens in the war years
- 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
- Hahn Steven. The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890. Oxford University Press, 1983.
- Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period] (1906), full length history of era; Dunning SchoolDunning SchoolThe Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
approach; 570 pp; ch 12 on Georgia online - 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.
- Darden Asbury Pyron; ed. Recasting: Gone with the Wind in American Culture University Press of Florida. (1983) online
- Reidy; Joseph P. From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800–1880 University of North Carolina Press, (1992)
- 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, William Y.William Y. ThompsonWilliam Young Thompson is a retired historian who was affiliated for most of his academic career, from 1955 through 1988, with Louisiana Tech University at Ruston in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana...
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
- Woodward, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938)
- Woolley; Edwin C. The Reconstruction of Georgia (1901 )Dunning SchoolDunning SchoolThe Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
online edition
Since 1900
- Fink, Gary M. Prelude to the Presidency: The Political Character and Legislative Leadership Style of Governor Jimmy Carter (Greenwood Press, 1980)
- Gilbert C. Fite; Richard B. Russell, Jr., Senator from Georgia University of North Carolina Press, 1991
- Pearl K. Ford, 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
- Steely, Mel. The Gentleman from Georgia: The Biography of Newt Gingrich Mercer University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-86554-671-1.
- Tuck, Stephen G. N. Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940–1980 . University of Georgia Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8203-2265-2.)
- Woodward, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938)
Local
- Bauerlein; Mark. Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (Encounter Books, 2001) online edition
- 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, 1992 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 PressUniversity of Georgia PressThe University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is a publishing house and is a member of the Association of American University Presses.Founded in 1938, the UGA Press is a division of the University of Georgia and is located on the campus in Athens, Georgia, USA...
, 2002. ISBN 0-8203-2319-5.) - 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 v 57 #3 2001. pp 573+.
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.
- 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