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(Abbr. GA or Ga.) A state of the southeast United States. It was admitted as one of the original Thirteen Colonies in 1788. Georgia was founded in 1732 by a group led by the British philanthropist James Oglethorpe and named for King George II. Atlanta is the capital and the largest city. Population: 9,360,000.
For more information on Georgia, visit Britannica.com.
Georgia has played a pivotal role in shaping the South and the nation. Its history is one of stark contrasts, both painful and inspirational, filled with hatred and high idealism, poverty and prosperity. The landscape itself ranges from swampland in the south to mountains in the north, with the "fall line"—a topographical divide that transverses Georgia's midsection—separating the flat "low-country" from the hilly "upcountry." Georgia's cities have been influential: coastal Savannah; lowcountry Albany; the fall-line cities of Columbus, Macon, and Augusta; and, after the Civil War, Atlanta, which today is virtually its own state. But until recent decades, agriculture and rural life dominated the state. Tensions between rural and urban, black and white, rich and poor have characterized Georgia's economic and political developments, from the colonial era to the present.
A Contested Colony
Georgia became England's thirteenth colony in 1732, when the Crown granted a charter to reform-minded trustees, who outlawed slavery in their colony, hoping to create a yeoman's paradise for the poor. Less idealistic, the Crown wanted a defensive buffer for South Carolina's rice plantations, which suffered raids from Spanish Florida. James Edward Oglethorpe, England's well-bred champion of penal reform and religious freedom (Protestants only), arrived with the first ship and established Savannah. Although Oglethorpe wanted debtors prisons to furnish Georgia's manpower, so many middling types signed up that the prisoners never got out.
The prohibition on slavery failed, too; Carolina's wealthy plantations enticed Georgia's settlers, who illegally bought slaves. The popular Methodist revivalist George Whitefield encouraged this, preaching that God made Georgia for slavery. In 1752, the Crown reclaimed its charter and lifted Oglethorpe's ban. By 1776, Georgia's tidewater planters owned fifteen thousand slaves and controlled the colony. The Revolution gave planters a good shake. Some fled, others lost slaves to Florida's wilderness. In the war's final years, Georgia's patriots fought guerrilla campaigns in the backcountry. There, rough commoners—such as the illiterate but savvy fighter Elijah Clarke and the redcoat-killing Nancy Hart—won a place in Georgia's politics and folklore.
Early Statehood and Land
Major events between 1790 and 1810 involved land. Colonial boundaries gave Georgia vast western holdings. Greed overwhelmed Georgia's legislators, resulting in the ugly Yazoo Fraud of 1795. To save face, Georgia ceded its Western Lands to the federal government and set its present-day boundaries. In return, federal officials promised future support in removing Georgia's Indians, who occupied two-thirds of the state.
John Milledge, elected governor in 1802, transformed Georgia's land policies. All public lands, including Indian lands, would be surveyed into yeoman-sized lots and distributed by lottery. The system was democratic for white men; Indians and free blacks were excluded, and women had no right to own property. With the lottery, white Georgians surged upcountry, and the statehouse moved with them. In 1804, the government abandoned Savannah for the fall-line town of Milledgeville, named for the land-reform governor. The stage was set for Georgia's internal development.
The Antebellum Era
Between 1810 and 1860, three powerful trends shaped Georgia: the removal of the Creeks and Cherokees; the expansion of cotton plantations and slavery; and the rise of sectional tensions between North and South. In 1810, Indian territory still encompassed two-thirds of Georgian lands; plantation slavery was limited largely to the coast; and the southern states had no collective identity as "Dixie." By 1814, a completely new Georgia moved toward civil war.
Georgia took Creek land piecemeal over many decades. Weakened by defeat during the War of 1812, the tribe made final its cessions to Georgia in 1814, 1821, and 1825/26. The Cherokees of northwest Georgia defended themselves by adopting European ways. They enslaved blacks, developed an alphabet, and established legislative government at their capital, New Echota. But gold discovered in Dahonega, an Appalachian town, sparked the gold rush of 1829, flooding Cherokee Georgia with whites. The Indian Removal Act of 1830; Georgia's lottery for Cherokee land in 1832; and a dubious treaty in 1835 ended the Cherokee defense. In the winter of 1837–1838, federal soldiers forced them west.
White farmers plowed old Indian lands, but north and south Georgia developed differently. The upper Piedmont and Appalachian areas emerged as a yeoman strong-hold. "Plain folk" settled on family farms, distant from commodity markets. They practiced subsistence farming (corn and hogs) and grew wheat or cotton for cash. Both slaves and plantations were scarce.
The lower Piedmont became a stronghold of cotton plantations. Plantations had long been fixed along the coast, where slaves could produce rice, indigo, and long-staple cotton. But improved mechanical cotton gins, produced in Savannah around 1800, facilitated cultivation of short-staple cotton in Georgia's interior. With Creek removal, aspiring whites carved sprawling plantations across the lower Piedmont. In 1800, about 60,000 slaves lived in Georgia; by 1830, some 220,000. Federal law banned slave importation in 1808, but Georgia's planters continued to smuggle slaves until the 1860s. Georgia led America in cotton production and illegal slaving.
Georgia's yeomen and planters had little need for cities in Georgia's interior, but some leaders called for modernization. Augusta, Macon, and Columbus had fall-line waterpower for industry, and, by the late antebellum period, they had textile mills, foundries, and food-processing plants. Columbus became the Deep South's manufacturing leader. Legislators sponsored railroad development, most notably the Western and Atlantic Railroad, whose construction in the mid-1840s resulted in a new railroad town—Terminus, later renamed Atlanta.
Dixie's cotton revolution made southern states different from their industrializing, free-labor neighbors up north. Sectional political conflicts and northern abolitionism made white southerners conscious of themselves as "southerners," and planters staunchly defended their "peculiar institution." When the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) opened vast western lands for Americans, sectional conflict boiled. Would the West follow the southern or the northern model? The question of slavery in the West ultimately led the North and South to war.
Civil War and Reconstruction
The Confederacy needed Georgia—economically powerful and strategically located—but opposition to secession rang across Georgia, not just among yeomen and poor whites, but also among wealthy planters; proslavery champion Benjamin Hill argued that war would bring only defeat and emancipation. When electing representatives for a state convention to rule on secession in early 1861, Georgians gave a thin majority to antisecession candidates. But at the convention, disunion sentiment reigned, and on 19 January 1861, Georgia became the fifth state to join the Confederacy.
Georgia's planters and industrialists profited from the wartime cotton prices and manufacturing needs, but they worried about rank-and-file patriotism. The Confederate legislature thus enacted a draft to fill its armies. When drafted, poor whites had no options, but large planters were exempted from military service, and small planters had buyout options. Class divisions among whites therefore flared hot, desertion rates soared, and poor women rioted for food in Columbus and Colquit. North Georgia and the Lower Chattahoochee Valley suffered recurrent guerrilla warfare.
An internally divided Georgia faced a Union onslaught in 1864 as General William T. Sherman's forces pushed into northwest Georgia. A bloodbath at Chickamauga and strong Confederate entrenchments at Kennesaw Mountain temporarily checked the Union advance. But in September 1864, Sherman took Atlanta, the Confederacy's transportation hub, ensuring Lincoln's reelection. Sherman'S March to the Sea wasted Georgia and speeded Confederate surrender in 1865.
War liberated black Georgians. They fled plantations for Union camps and reveled in the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery. "Freedmen" sought family farms or jobs in Georgia's cities, especially Atlanta, which rapidly rebuilt. Blacks supported the Republican Party, which trumpeted Lincoln and emancipation. Former Confederates championed the Democratic Party, which fought for white supremacy. Fierce political battles marked the postwar decades.
Race and Politics, 1865–1915
Reconstruction in Georgia was brief, bloody, and disastrous for African Americans. The Freedmen'S Bureau met black demands for education, but proved more concerned for planter's needs. When southern Democrats passed Black Codes, virtually enslaving the freedmen, Republicans in Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, placing Dixie under military rule and enfranchising blacks. Georgia's new Republican Party—a biracial coalition of blacks and hill-country whites—formed a majority at Georgia's constitutional convention of 1867. African Americans made up 30 percent of the convention delegates. Milledgeville refused to accommodate these men and thereby lost the statehouse; the delegates met in Atlanta and made it Georgia's capital. The constitution mandated universal manhood suffrage, women's property rights, and free public schools. Georgia's legislature of 1868 included thirty-two African Americans, including civil rights activist Henry McNeal Turner. The legislature ratified the Fourteenth Amendment (black citizenship rights) in July 1868, thereby gaining Georgia's readmission to the Union.
When federal troops soon departed, the Democrat counterattack began. In Georgia's legislature, Democrats convinced white Republicans to help them purge blacks from the statehouse. This cross-party alliance expelled the black representatives, claiming that Georgia's constitution gave blacks the right to vote, not hold office. Georgia's supreme court ruled the purge unconstitutional, and Congress investigated, but Democrats resisted intervention with the help of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Confederate General John B. Gordon (governor, 1886–1890) led Georgia's Klan, which terrorized and assassinated Republicans in 1868–1869. In response, Congress expelled Georgia from the Union in 1869, crushing the Klan, reimposing military rule, and reinstalling black officials. Georgia's biracial legislature ratified the Fifteenth Amendment (voting rights), and Georgia again rejoined the Union. But in the elections of 1870, with federal troops gone, the Democrats launched a campaign of violence that effectively destroyed Georgia's Republican Party. This time Congress refused to investigate, signaling victory for Georgia's Democrats, who called themselves "Redeemers."
For the next century, Georgia's conservative Democrats would decry the long nightmare of "bayonet rule" and "Negro domination." Generations of white Georgians (and American historians) would accept this interpretation, facts notwithstanding, and use it in defense of state's rights and segregation.
Democrats faced new challengers through the 1890s. In the 1870s, Independent Party coalitions championed reform, sometimes courting black voters. In the 1880s, the biracial Farmer's Alliance lobbied hard, but unsuccessfully, against conservative policies. In 1892, Georgia's Tom Watson led angry farmers (black and white) into the national Populist Party, seeking to empower "producers" over the planter-industrialist establishment. The presidential election of 1896 crushed the Populists and firmly established the one-party South, making Watson an out-spoken racist and killing hopes for biracial insurgency.
Lowcountry planters controlled state politics through Georgia's unusual "county-unit system," which vastly inflated the value of rural votes over urban votes in Democrat primaries, the only meaningful elections in a one-party state. Sparsely settled rural counties dominated the legislature and selected rustic governors such as Eugene Talmadge, who never campaigned in any city. Only the U. S. Supreme Court's Gray v. Sanders (1963) decision would eliminate the county-unit system and equalize Georgia politics.
In the 1890s, Jim Crow segregation and mob violence devastated black Georgians. Without opposition, Democrat lawmakers made blacks second-class citizens. To resist was to risk lynching. Georgia led the nation in lynchings; elected officials accepted and facilitated mob rule, while northern Republicans refused to intervene. In this hostile environment, the black leader Booker T. Washington delivered his conciliatory "Atlanta Compromise" speech at Atlanta's 1895 Exposition, and Atlanta University professor W. E. B. Du Bois published Souls of Black Folk (1903), which launched his career as the nation's leading civil rights activist. Disenfranchisement notwithstanding, Democrats remained obsessed with race. Georgia's gubernatorial primary of 1906 featured two Democrats blasting "Negro domination" and sparking a bloody white-on-black race riot in Atlanta. As a capstone to the era, Atlanta resident William Simmons organized the second KKK at nearby Stone Mountain in 1915.
The New South Economy, 1880–1940
If planters controlled state politics and lowcountry plantations, a new urban middle class conquered the upcountry. Led by Atlanta journalist Henry Grady, boosters trumpeted a "New South Creed" of urban-industrial development. Rural transformation, as well as the creed, spurred upcountry industrialization. The plain folk's postwar poverty coupled with new railroads and fertilizers brought them into the cotton market, which destroyed them. Declining cotton prices, soaring interest rates, and a cruel crop-lien law brought perpetual debt and foreclosure; tenancy replaced small farm ownership. These events enriched small-town merchants, who invested surplus capital into the local cotton mills that arose across the southern upcountry, from Virginia to Alabama. Mills hired poor farm families, who worked for low pay and lived in "mill villages" controlled and enhanced by management. Critics and defenders of the mills clashed; industrialization proved controversial. Meanwhile, black Atlanta developed separate businesses, creating a rising black middle class to accompany its poor working class.
South of Atlanta, change moved slowly. Planters had lost their slaves but not their land. With lien laws and credit control, they controlled black sharecroppers, who experienced, instead of freedom, grinding poverty. Cotton remained king until boll-weevil damage in the 1920s forced shifts to peanuts, pecans, and dairy farms. Low-country pine forests fell for lumber and turpentine. With an old-money sniff at Atlanta, Savannah stagnated. World War I inaugurated a major change—the great migration of blacks from South to North. Labor shortages up North and Jim Crow down South sparked the movement; after the war, the black exodus continued.
The Great Depression and the New Deal altered Georgia's economy. President Franklin Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat who owned a "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, used unprecedented federal intervention to alleviate suffering and revive the economy. Ordinary Georgians loved Roosevelt. Georgia's conservative Democrats needed federal aid but feared for state's rights, a growing southern dilemma. Federal agricultural programs paid planters not to plant cotton; sharecroppers went uncompensated, and many were forced off land. Federal industrial policies created a code for textile production, giving approval for labor unions. Hoping to improve their working lives, thousands of mill hands joined the United Textile Workers. Labor-management conflicts sparked the General Textile Strike of 1934, which saw 400,000 southern mill hands stop work. Company guards and state troops crushed the strike and left unionism badly weakened. New Deal legislation nonetheless aided workers by mandating eight-hour days, overtime pay, minimum wages, and social security.
World War and Cold War, 1940–1960
World War II was a major turning point in Georgia's history. It brought massive federal investment in defense plants and military camps. Black outmigration soared as defense plants outside Dixie recruited workers, while rural whites moved to booming shipyards. The Progressive governor Ellis Arnall eliminated the poll tax and boosted higher education. Organized labor gained. Blacks in Atlanta spoke out for civil rights—some even began voting.
When war ended in 1945, Georgia's direction was uncertain and remained so through the 1950s, as the forces for progress and tradition clashed. The economy improved, but not without pain. Textile mills boomed until foreign imports began to undermine them. Georgia's industrial base diversified, offering higher-wage jobs. Organized labor got crushed, except in isolated upcountry mill towns. The poultry industry helped small farmers. Lowcountry plantations adopted the mechanical cotton picker, forcing hundreds of thousands of blacks off the land and speeding the black exodus.
Postwar politics exploded. Three men claimed the governor's chair after the 1946 election, prompting scandal and national embarrassment. More significant, blacks registered to vote in growing numbers. White resistance to civil rights intensified after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision ruled against segregation. Atlanta native Martin Luther King Jr., a young Baptist preacher, led the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama, which ended segregated seating on city buses in 1957, King helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization with its headquarters in Atlanta, while whites organized a "massive resistance" campaign against federal intervention in racial matters. Between 1955 and 1960, state legislators passed numerous laws intended to scuttle school integration and added the Confederate stars and bars to the state flag.
Tensions between federal economic trends and sectional politics intensified. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and massive defense spending helped Cold War Georgia boom. But greater federal investment in Georgia meant increased pressure for civil rights, especially after the Soviets publicized Jim Crow policies to humiliate American diplomats. Georgia's black activists brought matters to a head in the early 1960s.
The Civil Rights Movement
Martin Luther King Jr. moved back to Atlanta in 1960. Independently, black college students began lunch-counter sitins in southern cities, leading to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also headquartered in Atlanta. In 1962, the SCLC unsuccessfully battled segregation in Albany; the campaign taught activists the importance of national media attention. They got plenty in the Birmingham campaign, which helped win President John Kennedy's support for the movement. King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the March on Washington on 28 August 1963. Often at odds, SCLC and SNCC both participated in the climactic 1965 voting-rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, with many Georgians, including Atlanta's Hosea Williams, in the lead.
Atlanta's white leaders, eager to look progressive, tried to stave off racial conflict and bad publicity, whether they believed in the movement or not. Mayors William B. Hartsfield and Ivan Allen Jr. worked with black leaders to make the transition to desegregation. Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology quietly integrated in fall 1961, the first public university in the South to do so without court order. Local tensions ran high, though. When King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Atlanta's stunned elite reluctantly hosted a biracial banquet in his honor.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (ensuring voting rights) revolutionized Georgia society and politics, but change outside Atlanta proved slow. Black voters soon liberalized Georgia's Democratic Party. Civil rights stalwarts Julian Bond and Andrew Young of Atlanta won election to state and national offices. Maynard Jackson became Atlanta's first black mayor in 1974.
Angry white Democrats, mostly rural and working-class, sent archsegregationist Lester Maddox to the governor's mansion in 1966; Atlanta's leaders cringed. Maddox was Georgia's last openly racist governor. Many white-supremacy Democrats defected to Georgia's Republican Party, which included suburban conservatives who viewed race as a secondary issue. Other Democrats, notably Jimmy Carter, forged biracial coalitions with populist undertones. These coalitions made him governor of Georgia in 1970 and president in 1976.
Prosperity and Uncertainty
After 1960, Georgia prospered as never before. Dalton became the world's "carpet capital." Civil rights victories opened doors for professional sports in Atlanta. Vietnam War production spurred industry. Gains in higher education, population, and high-tech industry boosted Georgia's reputation. Ted Turner's television network made baseball's Atlanta Braves "America's Team." Coca-Cola, invented and headquartered in Atlanta, became the world's most recognized beverage. Atlanta's selection as the location for the 1996 Olympics also marked a breakthrough.
But growth was uneven. Hard times persisted in south Georgia. Predominantly black south Atlanta suffered poverty; predominantly white north Atlanta and its suburbs boomed. Public schools declined; private schools soared. Cotton-mill closings depleted small towns. Extending prosperity to underdeveloped areas remained a key issue in the early 2000s.
Still, Georgia's relative social and economic health can be seen in the black migration back to the state. After 1970, northern and western blacks (many professionals) moved to Georgia in huge numbers, reversing the great migration and creating upper-class enclaves in Metro-Atlanta.
Georgia is no longer just black and white, however; Latino and Asian immigrants altered the ethnic mix. Traditional questions remained, but new trends intervened. Slow-growth movements, gay Atlanta, and environmental conflicts all suggested an uncertain future for a state with a deeply contested past.
Bibliography
Bartley, Numan V. The Creation of Modern Georgia. 2d ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Bayor, Ronald H. Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta. Chapel Hill, N. C. : University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Cobb, James C. Georgia Odyssey. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
Coleman, Kenneth, et al. A History of Georgia. 2d ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
DeCredico, Mary A. Patriotism for Profit: Georgia's Urban Entrepreneurs and the Confederate War Effort. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Dittmer, John. Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920.Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
Flamming, Douglas. Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884–1984. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Grant, Donald L. The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. Secaucus, N. J. : Carol, 1993.
Shaw, Barton C. The Wool Hat Boys: Georgia's Populist Party, 1892–1910. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
Stewart, Mart A. "What Nature Suffers to Groe": Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Williams, David. Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Wood, Betty. Gender, Race, and Rank in a Revolutionary Age: The Georgia Lowcountry, 1750–1820. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Notable Georgia Women of the Twentieth Century
Rebecca L. Felton (1835–1930), feminist, first female U. S. Senator (appointed 1922).
Juliette Gordon Low (1860–1927), founder (1912) of the Girl Scouts of America.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886–1939), pioneering blues singer.
Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949), author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind (1936).
Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964), critically acclaimed writer of southern fiction.
Rosalynn Carter (b. 1927), First Lady of the United States (1977–1981), human rights activist.
Coretta Scott King (b. 1927), civil rights leader, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Gladys Knight (b. 1944), legendary rhythm and blues singer.
Anne Firor Scott (b. 1921), pioneering women's historian.
Alice Walker (b. 1944), author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1983).
SOURCE: Georgia Politics in Transition
School desegregation is part of the Communist plot to overthrow this country.
SOURCE: Lester Maddox, governor of Georgia, 1969
I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.
SOURCE: Jimmy Carter, governor of Georgia, 1971
—Douglas Flamming
Facts and Figures
Area, 58,876 sq mi (152,489 sq km). Pop. (2000) 8,186,453, an 26.4% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Atlanta. Statehood, Jan. 2, 1788 (4th of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., Brasstown Bald, 4,784 ft (1,459 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Empire State of the South. Motto, Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. State bird, brown thrasher. State flower, Cherokee rose. State tree, live oak. Abbr., Ga.; GA
Geography
Georgia is the largest state E of the Mississippi River and has three main topographical areas. Extending inland from the coast is a low coastal plain that covers the southern half of the state. In mountainous N Georgia are the Appalachian Plateau, the valley and ridge province, and the Blue Ridge province. Bridging these two sections and embracing about one third of the state is the Piedmont foothill region in central Georgia. A number of islands, part of the Sea Islands chain, lie off Georgia's coastline.
The state is well drained by many rivers, including the Savannah, which forms the boundary with South Carolina; the Ocmulgee and the Oconee, which merge in the southeast to form the Altamaha; the Chattahoochee, which forms part of the Alabama boundary and joins with the Flint in the extreme southwest corner of the state to form the Apalachicola; and the Saint Marys, which rises in the large Okefenokee Swamp and forms part of the Georgia-Florida line. The most important cities are Atlanta,
Economy
Although the trade and service sectors supply the majority of jobs in Georgia, manufacturing and agriculture remain important to the state's economy. In addition, federal facilities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, near Atlanta; Fort Benning, near Columbus; and the Kings Bay naval base, contribute to the economy.
Cotton, once Georgia's most valuable crop, has declined in importance; in the 1990s it was rivaled by peanuts, tobacco, and corn. Georgia is easily the nation's largest producer of peanuts. Tobacco is the principal crop in the central and southern sections of the state, peanuts in the southwest. Livestock and poultry raising account for the largest share of farm income; broilers, eggs, and cattle are major products.
The manufacture of textiles and textile products has long been Georgia's leading industry, centering mainly around Columbus, Augusta, Macon, and Rome. Other major manufactures include transportation equipment, foods, paper products, and chemicals. Automobile manufacturing is important around Atlanta. Much of Georgia is heavily forested with pine, and the state is a leading producer of lumber and pulpwood. Although the state is rich in minerals, mining is not as important as manufacturing and agriculture. The most valuable minerals produced are clays, stone, kaolin, iron ore, sand, and gravel. Georgia is famous for its fine marble.
With its moderate winter climate and its Southern charm and beauty, the state is a popular vacation area. The Sea Islands are especially noted for their scenery and resorts. Warm Springs, established with the help of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the treatment of poliomyelitis, is now a historical landmark. Georgia's other attractions include Okefenokee Swamp, a large wilderness area; Chattahoochee and Oconee national forests, with facilities for hunting and fishing; Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park; Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (see National Parks and Monuments, table); and Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, on which is carved a Confederate memorial.
Government, Politics, and Higher Education
Georgia's constitution provides for an elected governor who serves for a term of four years. The legislature, called the general assembly, is made up of a senate with 56 members and a house of representatives with 180 members. Members of both houses are elected to terms of two years. Georgia sends 11 representatives and 2 senators to the U.S. Congress and has 13 electoral votes. Zell Miller, elected governor in 1990 and reelected in 1994, was succeeded by another Democrat, Roy E. Barnes, elected in 1998, but Barnes lost his 2002 reelection bid to Republican Sonny Perdue. Perdue was reelected in 2006.
Leading educational institutions include the Univ. of Georgia, at Athens; Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State Univ., Emory Univ., Clark College, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morris Brown College, all at Atlanta; Agnes Scott College, at Decatur; and Mercer Univ. and Wesleyan College, at Macon.
History
Early Exploration and Conflicting Claims
The Creek and Cherokee inhabited the Georgia area when Hernando De Soto and his expedition passed through the region c.1540. The Spanish later established missions and garrisons on the Sea Islands. In 1663, Charles II of England made a grant of land that included Georgia to the eight proprietors of Carolina. However, Spain claimed the whole eastern half of the present United States and protested the grant. The English ignored the protest, and the English-Spanish contest for the territory between Charleston (S.C.) and St. Augustine (Fla.) continued intermittently for almost a century. England became interested in settling Georgia as a buffer colony to protect South Carolina from Spanish invasion from the south.
Oglethorpe's Colony
In June, 1732, the English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe received a charter from George II (for whom the colony was named) to settle the colony of Georgia and form a board of trustees to manage it. Oglethorpe planned to settle Georgia as a refuge for debtors in England. The first colonists, led by Oglethorpe, reached the mouth of the Savannah River in Feb., 1733. On a bluff c.18 mi (29 km) upstream, the colonists laid out the first town, Savannah. In 1739 war broke out between Spain and England. Fighting occurred in Georgia, and in 1742, near Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island, Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish in the battle of Bloody Marsh, thereby effectively ending Spain's claim to the land N of the St. Marys River.
Georgia's early settlers included English, Welsh, Scots Highlanders, Germans, Italians, Piedmontese, and Swiss. Jews, Catholics, and settlers from other American colonies were at first barred. Immigrants fell generally into two groups: charity settlers, who were financed by the trustees, and adventurers, who paid their own way and came to receive the best land grants. The trustees had hoped that the colony would produce silk to send back to England, and early colonists were required to plant a specific number of mulberry trees for the cultivation of silkworms. The scheme, however, came to nothing. At first slavery was prohibited, but this and other restrictions impeded the colony's growth, and by the time Georgia became a royal colony in 1754, most of the restrictions had been abolished.
Georgia flourished as a royal colony. It fitted well into the British mercantile system, exporting rice, indigo, deerskins, lumber, naval stores, beef, and pork to England and buying there the manufactured articles it needed. Georgia's citizens were slower to resent those acts of the crown that exasperated the other colonies, but by June, 1775, Georgian patriots had begun to organize, and the following month delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Georgia's colonists were about equally divided into Loyalists and patriots during the American Revolution, but the patriots, exposed to Loyalist Florida on the south and Native American tribes on the west, fared badly. In Dec., 1778, the British captured Savannah, and by the end of 1779 they held every important town in Georgia.
Statehood
After American independence had been won, Georgia was the first Southern state to ratify (1788) the Constitution. Georgia came into conflict with the federal government over states' rights when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), that an individual could sue a state, a decision equally distasteful to other states as well as to Georgia. (This decision was later nullified by the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)
Further difficulties with the federal government stemmed from the related issues of the removal of Native Americans and land speculation centering around the Yazoo land fraud. In the midst of the Yazoo controversy, Georgia ceded (1802) its western lands to the United States in return for $1,250,000 and a pledge that the Native Americans would be removed from Georgia lands. By 1826 the Creek had yielded their lands, but in 1827, the Cherokee set themselves up as an independent nation. The U.S. Supreme Court held (1832) that the state had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee, but President Jackson declined to support the Chief Justice, and in 1838 the Cherokee were forced to migrate west to government land in present day Oklahoma. The path of their journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
Cotton and the Confederacy
With the invention of the cotton gin (1793) by Eli Whitney, Georgia began to prosper as a cotton-growing state. Cotton was grown under the plantation system with labor supplied by slaves. By the 1840s a textile industry was established in the state. Although Georgia was committed to slavery before the Civil War, state leaders opposed secession. However, successive defeats on the national scene, culminating in the election of Lincoln as president, fostered separatist sentiment in the state.
On Jan. 19, 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and shortly afterward joined the Confederacy. The coast was soon blockaded by the Union navy, and in Apr., 1862, Fort Pulaski (which had been seized by the state in Jan., 1861) was recaptured by Union forces. Georgia became a major Civil War battlefield when, in 1864, Union Gen. W. T. Sherman launched his successful Atlanta campaign. On Nov. 15, 1864, Sherman set fire to Atlanta, and his subsequent march through Georgia to the sea, culminating in the fall (Dec.) of Savannah, left in its path a scene of great destruction.
The Long Aftermath of the Civil War
During Reconstruction, Georgia at first refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and was consequently placed under military rule. During the period of military rule Rufus B. Bullock, a radical Republican, was elected governor. Corruption prevailed during Bullock's administration (1868–71), but after the legislature approved the Fifteenth Amendment (the Thirteenth and Fourteenth having been ratified earlier), Georgia was readmitted (1870) to the Union, and Bullock resigned. Georgia's Democratic party has dominated the state's politics since the end of Reconstruction.
The textile industry recovered from the effects of the war and was expanding by the 1880s. Atlanta, which had succeeded Milledgeville as the capital in 1868, grew into a thriving industrial city, largely due to its importance as the center of an expanding regional railroad network.
The effect of the war on agriculture—which had formerly been dependent on slave labor—was more serious. The breakup of large plantations resulted in the rise of tenant farming and sharecropping, systems often accompanied by poverty and abuse. After World War I agriculture suffered further setbacks as the boll weevil caused great destruction to cotton crops and the soil became exhausted through erosion and overuse. A farm depression began in Georgia long before the general depression of the 1930s. The state weathered the depression, but its subsequent history was marked by political and racial conflict.
The Struggle for Racial Equality
In 1941, Gov. Eugene Talmadge caused nationwide commotion by discharging three educators in the state university system alleged to have advocated racial equality in the schools. The state university system lost its accreditation for a time as a result of Talmadge's action. Talmadge was defeated in the 1942 Democratic primary by Ellis G. Arnall.
Under Arnall's administration, Georgia became the first state to grant the vote to 18-year-olds, and in 1946 (on the strength of a U.S. Supreme Court decision) blacks voted for the first time in the Georgia Democratic primary. Among Arnall's other administrative acts was the adoption of a new constitution in Aug., 1945. The 1945 constitution, which, in amended form, is still in effect in the state, contained a provision for Georgia's notorious county-unit system. This system for nominating state officials in Democratic primaries led to the political control of urban areas by sparsely populated rural areas.
The integration of public schools, following the 1954 Supreme Court decision, was strenuously opposed by many Georgians. However, in 1961 the legislature abandoned a “massive resistance” policy, and Georgia became the first state in the deep South to proceed with integration without a major curtailment of its public school system. Racial tensions persisted, however, and in May, 1970, racial disorders broke out in Augusta.
Georgia's county-unit system (held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Apr., 1950) was abolished by federal court order in 1962. In 1972, the Georgian Andrew Young became the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress; he later became mayor of Atlanta. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and the 39th president of the United States (1977–81), had been governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975; his administration brought attention to the state, whose urban centers, especially Atlanta, were beginning to experience rapid growth. Today, roughly one half of the jobs in Georgia are in the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is sprawling into formerly rural districts, highlighting the cultural and economic gaps between Georgia's rural and urban areas.
Bibliography
See H. E. Bolton, The Debatable Land (1968); R. H. Shyrock, Georgia and the Union in 1850 (1926, repr. 1968); R. M. Myers, ed., The Children of Pride (1972); J. Crutchfield, ed., Georgia Almanac, 1989–90 (1990); N. V. Bartley, The Creation of Modern Georgia (2d ed. 1990).
State in the southeastern United States bordered by Tennessee and North Carolina to the north, South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Florida to the south, and Alabama to the west. Its capital and largest city is Atlanta.
Local Time: May 16, 3:14 PM
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| State of Georgia | |||||||||||
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| Official language(s) | English | ||||||||||
| Capital | Atlanta | ||||||||||
| Largest city | Atlanta | ||||||||||
| Largest metro area | Atlanta metro area | ||||||||||
| Area | Ranked 24th | ||||||||||
| - Total | 59,411 sq mi (154,077 km²) |
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| - Width | 230 miles (370 km) | ||||||||||
| - Length | 298 miles (480 km) | ||||||||||
| - % water | 2.6 | ||||||||||
| - Latitude | 30° 21′ N to 35° N | ||||||||||
| - Longitude | 80° 50′ W to 85° 36′ W | ||||||||||
| Population | Ranked 9th | ||||||||||
| - Total (2000) | 8,186,453 | ||||||||||
| - Density | 141.4/sq mi 54.59/km² (18th) |
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| - Median income | $43,217 (28th) | ||||||||||
| Elevation | |||||||||||
| - Highest point | Brasstown Bald[1] 4,784 ft (1,458 m) |
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| - Mean | 591 ft (180 m) | ||||||||||
| - Lowest point | Atlantic Ocean[1] 0 ft (0 m) |
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| Admission to Union | January 2, 1788 (4th) | ||||||||||
| Governor | Sonny Perdue (R) | ||||||||||
| U.S. Senators | Saxby Chambliss (R) Johnny Isakson (R) |
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| Congressional Delegation | List | ||||||||||
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | ||||||||||
| Abbreviations | GA US-GA | ||||||||||
| Web site | www.georgia.gov | ||||||||||
Georgia (IPA: /ˈdʒɔrdʒə/) is a
state in the southern region of the
Georgia is bordered on the south by Florida; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina; on the west by Alabama and by Florida in the extreme southwest; and on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina. The northern part of the state is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mountain range in the vast mountain system of the Appalachians. The central piedmont extends from the foothills to the fall line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the continental coastal plain of the southern part of the state. The highest point in Georgia is Brasstown Bald, 4,784 feet (1,458 m); the lowest point is sea level.
With an area of 59,441 square miles (153,951 km²), Georgia is ranked 24th in size among the 50 U.S. states. Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi River in terms of land area, although it is the fourth largest (after Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin) in total area, a term which includes expanses of water claimed as state territory.[3]
Beginning from the Atlantic Ocean, the state's eastern border with South Carolina runs up the Savannah River, northwest to its origin at the confluence of the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers. It then continues up the Tugaloo (originally Tugalo) and into the Chattooga River, its most significant tributary. These bounds were decided in the 1787 Treaty of Beaufort, and tested in the U.S. Supreme Court in the two Georgia v. South Carolina cases in 1922 and 1989.
The border then takes a sharp turn around the tip of Rabun County, at latitude 35°N, though from this point it diverges slightly south (possibly due to later resurveying with better accuracy). This originally was the Georgia and North Carolina border all the way back to the Mississippi River, until Tennessee was divided from North Carolina, and Alabama and Mississippi (the Yazoo Lands) were taken from Georgia.
The state's western border then departs in another straight line south-southeastward, at a point southwest of Chattanooga, to meet the westernmost point of the Chattahoochee River near West Point, Georgia. It continues down to the point where it ends at the Flint River (the confluence of the two forming Florida's Apalachicola River), and goes almost due east and very slightly south, in a straight line to the origin of the Saint Mary's River, which then forms the remainder of the boundary back to the ocean.
It should be noted that the water boundaries are still set to be the original thalweg of the rivers. Since then, several have been inundated by man made lakes, including the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint point now under Lake Seminole.
Georgia is divided into five geologic regions. These include the Ridge and Valley, the Blue Ridge, the Piedmont, the Coastal Plain, and the Appalachian Plateau. Each region has its own distinctive characteristics. For instance the Ridge and Valley, which lies in the northwest corner of the state, includes limestone, sandstone, shale and other sedimentary rocks, which have yielded construction-grade limestone, barite, ochre and small amounts of coal. The Blue Ridge Mountains of northeast Georgia are made up of metamorphic rock as well as granite and diabase. The geology of the Piedmont includes schist, amphibolite, gneiss, migmatite, and granite while the primary resource of the Coastal Plain is kaolin.[4]
Georgia has a diverse mix of flora and fauna. The State of Georgia has approximately 250 trees and 58 protected plants. Georgia's trees include red cedar, scaly-bark and white hickories, as well as many others. Yellow jasmine, flowering quince, and mountain laurel make up just a few of the flowering shrubs in the state.
Regarding fauna, white-tailed (Virginia) deer can be found in approximately 50 counties. The mockingbird and brown thrasher are just two of the 160 bird species that can be found in the state. The rattlesnake, copperhead, and cottonmouth as well as salamanders, frogs, and toads are among 79 species of reptile and 63 amphibians that make Georgia their home. The most popular freshwater game fish are trout, bream, bass, and catfish, all but the last of which are produced in state hatcheries for restocking. Dolphins, porpoises, shrimp, oysters, and blue crabs are found off the Georgia coast.[5]
The majority of Georgia is primarily a humid subtropical climate tempered somewhat by occasional polar air masses in the winter. Hot and humid summers are typical, except at the highest elevations. The entire state, including the north Georgia mountains, receives moderate to heavy precipitation, which varies from 45 inches (1143 mm) in central Georgia[6] to approximately 75 inches (1905 mm) around the Northeast part of the state[7]. The degree to which the weather of a certain area of Georgia is subtropical depends not just on the latitude, but also on how close it is to the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico and the altitude. This is especially true in the mountainous areas in the northern part of the state, which are further away from ocean waters and can be up to 4500 feet (1350 m) or higher above sea level.
The areas near the Florida/Georgia border, extending from the entire Georgia coastline west to the Florida panhandle, experiences the most subtropical weather, similar to that of Florida: hot, humid summers with frequent afternoon thunderstorms and mild, somewhat drier winters. These areas experience snow much less frequently than other parts of Georgia. The Georgia Piedmont area is somewhat cooler in winter than the coastal areas. The Southern areas of the Piedmont may receive snow every other year, while areas close to the foothills get snow several times a year. This part of Georgia is especially vulnerable to ice storms. The mountains of Georgia have the coolest climate and most frequent snowfall in the state, although snowfall is less than any other part of the Appalachian Mountains.
In spite of having moderate weather compared to many other states, Georgia has occasional extreme weather. The highest temperature ever recorded is 112 °F (44.4 °C)[8], while the lowest ever recorded is -17 °F (-27.2 °C).[9] Georgia is one of the leading states in incidents of tornadoes. The areas closest to the Florida border get the same small F0 and F1 tornadoes associated with summer afternoon thunderstorms. However, it is very uncommon for tornadoes to become severe (over F3). As it is on the Atlantic coast, Georgia is also vulnerable to hurricanes, although the Georgia coastline only rarely experiences a direct hurricane strike. More common are hurricanes which strike the Florida panhandle, weaken over land, and bring strong tropical storm winds and heavy rain to the Georgia interior, as well as hurricanes that come close to the Georgia coastline, brushing the coast on their recurvature on the way up to hit the Carolinas.
In 2006 and 2007, however, Georgia has had severe droughts, especially in 2007.Temperatures over 100 degress have been recorded.
| Monthly average daily high and low temperatures for major Georgia cities | ||||||||||||
| City | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 51/11 33/1 |
56/13 35/2 |
65/18 42/6 |
73/23 49/9 |
80/27 58/14 |
87/31 65/18 |
90/32 69/21 |
88/31 68/20 |
82/28 63/17 |
73/23 51/11 |
63/17 42/6 |
54/12 35/2 |
| Atlanta | 52/11 34/1 |
57/14 36/2 |
65/18 44/7 |
73/23 50/10 |
80/27 60/16 |
86/30 67/19 |
89/32 71/22 |
88/31 70/21 |
82/28 64/18 |
73/23 53/12 |
63/17 44/7 |
55/13 36/2 |
| Augusta | 56/13 33/1 |
61/16 36/4 |
69/21 42/6 |
77/25 48/9 |
84/29 57/14 |
90/32 65/18 |
92/33 70/21 |
90/32 68/20 |
85/29 62/17 |
76/24 50/10 |
68/20 41/5 |
59/15 35/2 |
| Columbus | 57/14 37/3 |
62/17 39/4 |
69/21 46/8 |
76/24 52/11 |
83/28 61/16 |
90/32 69/21 |
92/33 72/22 |
91/32 72/22 |
86/30 66/19 |
77/25 54/12 |
68/20 46/8 |
59/15 39/4 |
| Macon | 57/14 34/1 |
61/16 37/3 |
68/20 44/7 |
76/24 50/10 |
83/28 59/15 |
90/32 67/19 |
92/33 70/21 |
90/32 70/21 |
85/29 64/18 |
77/25 51/11 |
68/20 42/6 |
59/15 36/2 |
| Savannah | 60/16 38/3 |
64/18 41/5 |
71/22 48/9 |
78/26 53/12 |
84/29 61/16 |
90/32 68/20 |
92/33 72/22 |
90/32 71/22 |
86/30 67/19 |
78/26 56/13 |
70/21 47/8 |
63/17 40/4 |
| Temperatures are given in |
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Georgia is home to 63 parks, 48 of which are state parks and 15 that are historic sites, and numerous state wildlife preserves, under
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