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* The skyline of Atlanta, Ga.[Credits : Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images] [The skyline of Atlanta, Ga.[Credits : Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images]]
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* The Deep South.[Credits : Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.] [The Deep South.[Credits : Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]]
* Lily pads in the Okefenokee Swamp, southeastern Georgia.[Credits : Randy Wells—Stone/Getty Images] [Lily pads in the Okefenokee Swamp, southeastern Georgia.[Credits : Randy Wells—Stone/Getty Images]]
* Spanish moss hanging from oak trees in Savannah, Ga.[Credits : William Manning/Corbis] [Spanish moss hanging from oak trees in Savannah, Ga.[Credits : William Manning/Corbis]]
* White ibis in Okefenokee Swamp, southeastern Georgia.[Credits : Raymond Gehman—National Geographic/Getty Images]
* Loading slash pine near Fitzgerald, south-central Georgia.[Credits : Larry Lefever/Grant Heilman Photography]
* Container port at Savannah, Ga.[Credits : Roger Tully—Stone/Getty Images]
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* The Old Governor’s Mansion, now part of Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Ga.[Credits : Milt and Joan Mann from CameraMann]
* Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain, Decatur, Georgia.[Credits : David Muench/Corbis]
* Fountains in Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Ga.[Credits : © Andrew Gunners—Digital Vision/Getty Images]
* A water hazard surrounding a green at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga.[Credits : David Cannon/Getty Images]
* Store on Whitehall Street, Atlanta, Ga., selling furnishings and slaves, 1864.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-B8171-3608 LC)]
* Gen. William T. Sherman (leaning on the breach of gun cannon) and staff at Union Fort No. 7, …[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-B8171-3626 DLC)]
* Sharecroppers picking cotton in Georgia, 1898.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]
* Weaving room in a cotton mill, Augusta, Ga., late 19th century.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]
* Workers extracting turpentine in a Georgia forest, c. 1930s.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]
* Jimmy Carter, during his campaign for the U.S. presidency, Plains, Georgia, 1976.[Credits : Alex Webb/Magnum Photos]
* State flag of Georgia, U.S., from July 1, 1956, to January 31, 2001.
* State flag of Georgia, U.S., from January 31, 2001, to May 8, 2003.
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* Results of the American presidential election, 2004…[Credits : Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]
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Georgia Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstructionstate, United States
History » Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
Store on Whitehall Street, Atlanta, Ga., selling furnishings and slaves, 1864.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-B8171-3608 LC)]By the mid-19th century a vast majority of white Georgians, like most Southerners, had come to view slavery as economically indispensable to their society. Georgia, with the greatest number of large plantations of any state in the South, had in many respects come to epitomize plantation culture. When the American Civil War began in 1861, most white southerners (slave owners or not) joined in the defense of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy), which Georgia had helped to create.
Gen. William T. Sherman (leaning on the breach of gun cannon) and staff at Union Fort No. 7, …[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-B8171-3626 DLC)]The war involved Georgians at every level. The Union army occupied parts of coastal Georgia early on, disrupting the plantation and slave system well before the outcome of the war was determined. In 1864 Union troops under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman invaded Georgia from the north. Sherman and his troops laid siege to Atlanta in late summer and burned much of the city before finally capturing it. Sherman then launched his March to the Sea, a 50-mile- (80-km-) wide swath of total destruction across Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah, some 200 miles (320 km) to the southeast; Savannah, captured in late December, was largely spared.
Sharecroppers picking cotton in Georgia, 1898.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]In the aftermath of the Civil War, Georgia farmers attempted to restore the state’s agricultural economy, but the relationship between land and labour changed dramatically. After some experimentation with various contractual arrangements for farm labour following emancipation, the system of sharecropping, or paying the owner for use of the land with some portion of the crop, became a generally accepted institution in Georgia and throughout the South. The system encouraged both the landowner and the sharecropper to strive for large harvests and thus often led to the land being mined of its fertility. Almost invariably, land and capital remained in white hands while labour remained largely, though not entirely, black. This entrenched pattern was not broken until the scourge of the boll weevil in the late 1910s and early ’20s ended the long reign of “King Cotton.”
Reconstruction in Georgia was violent and brief. In 1868 the Republican Party came to power in Georgia, with the election of northern-born businessman Rufus Bullock as governor. In turn, the Georgia Democrats and their terrorist arm, the Ku Klux Klan, executed a reign of violence against them, killing hundreds of African Americans in the process. Bullock steadfastly promoted African American equality to no avail, as the Democratic Party, which dismissed Georgia’s Republicans as “scalawags,” regained control in 1871 and set Georgia on a course of white supremacist, low-tax, and low-service government. Former Confederate officers frequently held the state’s highest offices. In the 1890s, in the midst of an agricultural depression, a political alliance of farmers, including African Americans, generally known as Populists and led by Thomas E. Watson, challenged and defeated the conservatives, who had been in control and worked initially for policies to help the economic concerns of small farmers and against the interests of planters and the railroads.
Weaving room in a cotton mill, Augusta, Ga., late 19th century.[Credits : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]In the late 19th century some Georgians began to promote an industrial economy, especially the development of textile manufacturing. Atlanta newspaper editor and journalist Henry Grady became a leading voice for turning toward a more industrial, commercial-based economy in Georgia. By the 1880s and ’90s the manufacture of textiles and iron began to expand, and Atlanta grew steadily as a commercial centre based heavily on railroad transportation.
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"Georgia." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 21 Aug. 2008
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Georgia. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 21, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230228/Georgia
Georgia
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