Georgia (state)

Article Outline

Introduction; Physical Geography; Economic Activities; The People of Georgia; Education and Cultural Institutions; Recreation and Places of Interest; Government; History

Land Speculation

During the 1790s there was widespread speculation in land in Georgia. Corrupt state and local officials made grants of millions more acres than actually existed in the state. Much of the nonexistent land was then sold to outside speculators and companies. The most infamous land scam was the Yazoo Fraud of 1795. The legislature authorized the sale of a vast tract near the Yazoo River to four land companies in which most of the legislators held shares. There was a public outcry, and a new legislature, elected in 1796, canceled the sale and offered refunds to the land companies. However, much of the land had already been resold, and the new buyers insisted on keeping it. In 1802 Georgia ceded the territory to the federal government, which agreed to settle the claims. After the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Yazoo sale valid, Congress in 1814 authorized payment of $4.3 million to the claimants.

The 19th Century

The War of 1812

Georgians saw the War of 1812, between the United States and Britain, as an opportunity to open up more land. On the eve of the war a former governor, George Mathews, led a private army on an abortive invasion of Florida. Despite the fact that the war was with Britain, not Spain, Georgia’s Governor David Mitchell used the excuse of war to lead the Georgia militia on another unauthorized attack on Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1812. The invasion failed, however, and the troops withdrew to Georgia soil.

Meanwhile, the Upper Creek, living mainly in Alabama, joined the British against the United States. Georgia volunteers under General John Floyd rushed into the Creek country of southwest Georgia. At the same time, General Andrew Jackson led an army into Alabama and defeated the Upper Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Jackson was supported by 500 Cherokee, who swam the Tallapoosa River to attack the Creek forces from the rear. After the victory Jackson forced the Upper Creek to sign a treaty giving up a large portion of Alabama and Georgia.

Acquisition of Native American Lands

After the revolution, the United States had made treaties with the Creek and Cherokee recognizing their right to occupy their lands in Georgia forever. At the same time, the federal government sent agents to encourage these nations to adopt white lifestyles. Nevertheless, the administration of President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 made a compact with Georgia that seemed to contradict the treaties. In exchange for Georgia’s claims to Alabama and Mississippi, Georgia was given $1,250,000 and a promise that the federal government would remove the Native Americans as soon as this could be done peacefully and on reasonable terms. When the federal government moved too slowly for impatient Georgians, Governor George Troup in 1825 threatened to remove the Creek by force. By 1827 the Creek signed treaties ceding their remaining lands in Georgia. They then moved west across the Mississippi River to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

Economic Development

The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in Georgia in 1793, stimulated the extensive cultivation of cotton. The cotton plantation system and slavery spread throughout the state, especially into central and southwest Georgia. In the northern part of the state, subsistence agriculture predominated, with individual farm families doing their own labor. Most commonly they grew corn, wheat, and other food crops. Relatively little cotton was grown in this part of the state before the Civil War. The slave proportion in these counties ranged from about one-quarter of the population to as low as 4 percent in the Blue Ridge Mountain counties. In contrast, by 1860 most of the region between Atlanta and Macon and most of southwest Georgia had majority black populations and grew cotton as well as corn and other staples. Not all of Georgia was highly developed at the time of the Civil War. South-central Georgia, known as the Wiregrass Country, was largely a cattle frontier. In contrast, the Atlantic coast and the Sea Islands had Georgia’s largest plantations, growing large quantities of rice and cotton.

For the state as a whole in 1860, four of every nine persons were slaves. While the treatment of slaves varied, all were oppressed by a system that denied them basic rights and liberties. Slavery was perhaps at its worst in its impact on the family, where slave marriages had no legal standing, sexual abuse of women was frequent, and families could be broken up on the master’s whim. Many white families also lived a spartan existence in that era. It is estimated that in 1860 about half of the free families owned no land and three-fifths owned no slaves. Property became increasingly concentrated in a few hands and, by the time of the Civil War, about one-tenth of the people held nine-tenths of the wealth.

Georgians not only grew cotton, they also turned it into cloth. The first cotton mill in Georgia was built in 1829 on the Oconee River at White Hall. By the Civil War, Georgia was the South’s leading producer of cotton goods with almost 3,000 workers, 60 percent of whom were women. In addition to cotton cloth, Georgia produced woolen and leather goods, pig iron, paper, shoes, carriages, and a variety of other products. Slavery moved from the field to the factory. In 1860 about 5 percent of the slave labor force was used in industry.

Transportation facilities were also expanded throughout the state. Georgia’s first rail line, the Georgia Railroad, chartered in 1833, ran about 160 km (100 mi) from Athens to Augusta. Atlanta began as the starting point of the state-owned Western & Atlantic (W&A) Railroad, chartered in 1836 to run through the old Cherokee country from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Soon the W&A was linked to three other lines: the Georgia Railroad ran a branch from Union Point to Atlanta; the Central of Georgia came up from Savannah through Macon to Atlanta; and the Atlanta and West Point Railroad carried passengers and freight to Alabama.

Georgia’s booming economy fueled a population explosion. Between 1820 and 1840 the population more than doubled, from 341,000 to 691,000. In the 1840s and 1850s it grew by almost half again, passing 1 million by the time of the Civil War. In per-capita wealth, Georgia in 1860 was one of the ten richest states in the Union.

The Civil War

Slavery was one of the most divisive political issues in Congress in the 19th century. Many Congress members from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because it was considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. Members from the Deep South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida) believed that slavery was essential to their cotton-based agricultural system and that the North was trying to dominate the national economy.

By the 1850s, the Southern states were united in bitter opposition to proposed congressional legislation barring slavery from the country’s new Western territories. Many in the South were coming to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves. Yet many of Georgia’s leaders urged compromise. Largely through the efforts of three Georgians, Representatives Alexander H. Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Howell Cobb, the Southern states accepted the Compromise Measures of 1850, a series of acts that temporarily settled the issue.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown immediately advocated secession on the basis of the states’ rights doctrine. Stephens argued against it. While he conceded that Georgia had been treated poorly, he asserted that there was nothing to fear from Lincoln. Stephens had known Lincoln for years and argued that he was no enemy of the South. Moreover, Stephens pointed out that Lincoln as a Republican could do little to interfere with slavery because the Democratic Party controlled Congress and did not agree with the Republicans on the issue. Finally, Stephens pleaded for caution, since Georgia was doing well economically within the Union and might do worse if secession led to civil war.

Despite Stephens’s best efforts, Georgians voted narrowly for secession in January 1861 and joined other Southern states in forming the Confederate States of America. Stephens pledged to support his state regardless of its decision, and was chosen as vice president of the Confederacy. The American Civil War began officially on April 12, 1861, when South Carolina militia bombarded a federal fort in Charleston harbor.

During the war, Georgia was a major source of food, arms, and other supplies for the South until 1864. During the early part of the war the only military action in Georgia occurred along the coast, which was blockaded by Union gunboats. In 1862 Union troops captured Fort Pulaski. The first major battle in Georgia was in September 1863, when Union troops were routed at the Battle of Chickamauga.

At Andersonville Prison, near Andersonville, captured Union Army soldiers were confined between February 1864 and April 1865. Out of a total of 49,485 prisoners, about one-fourth of them died from constant exposure to the elements, inadequate food, impure water, congestion, and filth. After the war the prison superintendent, Major Henry Wirz, was tried for war crimes by a U.S. military court and hanged.

In the spring of 1864 a Union force, led by General William T. Sherman, invaded Georgia from Tennessee. Sherman and his men took Atlanta in September. After setting fire to the city in November, they resumed their famous march to the sea. Houses in their path were looted, and bridges, railroads, factories, mills, and warehouses were dismantled or burned. Sherman captured Savannah in December and then turned northward and marched into the Carolinas. The Confederacy finally surrendered in April 1865.

With men gone off to war, women successfully ran farms and plantations and supported the Confederacy in a variety of other ways. Women as well as men suffered from the invasion of their homes by conquering armies. Writing shortly after the war, Frances Howard of Bartow County noted that: “By the light of their burning homes, Southern women saw their children die of cold and hunger, and they heard the incendiaries laugh as they quoted the words of one of their leaders: ‘The seed of the serpent must be crushed from the land.’ Are these things easily forgotten?”