Georgia was one of the original seven slave states that formed the Confederate States of America in February 1861, triggering the U.S. Civil War. The state governor, Democrat Joseph E. Brown, wanted locally raised troops to be used only for the defence of Georgia, in defiance of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who wanted to deploy them on other battlefronts. When the Union blockade prevented Georgia from exporting its plentiful cotton in exchange for key imports, Brown ordered farmers to grow food instead, but the breakdown of transport systems led to desperate shortages.
There was not much fighting in Georgia until September 1863, when Confederates under Braxton Bragg defeated William S. Rosecrans at Chickamauga Creek. In May 1864, William T. Sherman started pursuing the Confederates towards Atlanta, which he captured in September, in advance of his March to the Sea. This six-week campaign destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure of Georgia, decisively shortening the war. When news of the march reached Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia, whole Georgian regiments deserted, feeling they were needed at home. The Battle of Columbus, fought on the Georgia-Alabama border on April 16, 1865, is reckoned by some criteria to have been the last battle of the war.
In December 1860, Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown, a passionate believer in slavery and southern states' rights, opined that the election of Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican, to the U.S. presidency would result in the ending of slavery in the United States. Thus, Brown called upon Georgians to resist anti-slavery interventions, declaring that failure to do so would result in the emancipation of their slaves:
What will be the result to the institution of slavery, which will follow submission to the inauguration and administration of Mr. Lincoln as the President ... it will be the total abolition of slavery ... I do not doubt, therefore, that submission to the administration of Mr. Lincoln will result in the final abolition of slavery. If we fail to resist now, we will never again have the strength to resist.
Later that month, after South Carolina became the first state to issue an Ordinance of Secession, celebrations broke out in Savannah, Georgia.[3] The following month, in January 1861, the Georgia Secession Convention issued its own ordinance, in which it outlined the causes that motivated the state to declare its secession from the Union. The ordinance cited the views of U.S. president-elect Abraham Lincoln and that of the Republican Party against "the subject of African slavery", anti-slavery sentiment in northern free states, and perceived support among northerners for equality for African Americans as reasons for Georgia's declaring of secession:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present ... the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding confederate States, with reference to the subject of African slavery. ... The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party ... anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. ... The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races ... were boldly proclaimed by its leaders, and applauded by its followers. ... The prohibition of slavery in the territories is the cardinal principle of this organization. ... These are the men who say the Union shall be preserved. ... Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican Party ... if we submit to them, it will be our fault and not theirs.
— Georgia Secession Convention, Georgia Declaration of Causes of Secession, January 29, 1861.[4]
During the vote of the resolution, the "secessionists cooked the numbers in order to insure their victory," and forced all delegates to sign a pledge to support secession, regardless of their vote.[5]
1862 Bank of the State of Georgia 50 cent banknote, redeemable in Confederate Treasury Notes
In a February 1861 speech to the Virginia secession convention, Georgian Henry Lewis Benning stated that the main reason as to why Georgia declared secession from the Union was due to "a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery."[6][7]
William L. Harris, one Mississippian secession commissioner, told a meeting of the Georgian general assembly that the Republicans wanted to implement "equality between the white and negro races" and thus secession was necessary for the slave states to resist their efforts.[8]
Contemporary Georgian religious leaders also supported slavery. One Georgian preacher condemned Republicans and abolitionists, stating that their anti-slavery views ran contrary to the teachings of the Christian religion, saying that such groups' views were "diametrically opposed to the letter and spirit of the Bible, and as subversive of all sound morality, as the worst ravings of infidelity."[6]
Home front
Governor Joseph E. Brown was a leading secessionist and led efforts to remove the state from the Union and into the Confederacy. A firm believer in state's rights, he defied the Confederate government's wartime policies. He resisted the Confederate military draft and tried to keep as many soldiers at home as possible to fight invading forces.[9] Brown challenged Confederate impressment of animals, goods, and slaves. Several other governors followed his lead.[10] During the war, Georgia sent nearly 100,000 men to battle for the Confederacy, mostly to the Virginian armies. Despite secession, many southerners in North Georgia remained loyal to the Union.
Georgia's Rabun County in particular, which did not declare secession from the Union,[13] was highly Unionist, described by some as being "almost a unit against secession." One of the county's residents recalled in 1865 that "You cannot find a people who were more averse to secession than were the people of our county", stating that "I canvassed the county in 1860–61 myself and I know that there were not exceeding twenty men in this county who were in favor of secession."[14]
The dividing lines were often not as clear as they are sometimes viewed in Rabun county during this period. In A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South, Jonathan Dean Sarris examines the wartime experiences of Fannin and Lumpkin counties. Within these two counties, Unionist and Confederate leaning factions fought brutally directly within the home front between 1861 and 1865. Sarris argues that there is a "complex web of local, regional, and national loyalties that connected pre-industrial mountain societies" and that these loyalties are among the major factors that determine the leanings of these mountain towns.[15] The Madden Branch Massacre in Fannin county was one of several atrocities that occurred as the mountain counties divided into pro and anti-Confederate factions. On November 29, 1864, six Georgians trying to enlist in the U.S. Army - Thomas Bell, Harvey Brewster, James T. Hughes, James B. Nelson, Elijah Robinson, and Samuel Lovell - were executed by the notorious Confederate guerilla John P. Gatewood, "the long-haired, red-bearded beast from Georgia" - but, Peter Parris, and Wyatt J. Parton escaped the execution.[16]
While concentrated in the mountains and large cities, Unionism in Georgia was not confined to those areas and could be found in areas across the state.[17]
Food shortages
By summer 1861, the Union naval blockade virtually shut down the export of cotton and the import of manufactured items. Food that normally came by rail from the Northern states were halted. The governor and legislature pleaded with planters to grow less cotton and more food. The planters refused because at first, they thought the Union would not or could not fight. The planters then saw cotton prices in Europe soared and they expected Europe to soon intervene and break the blockade. The legislature imposed cotton quotas and made it a crime to grow an excess, but the food shortages continued to worsen, especially in the towns.[18] In more than a dozen instances across the state, poor white women raided stores and captured supply wagons to get such necessities as bacon, corn, flour, and cotton yarn.[19]
In some cases, Confederate armies forcibly seized food from Georgians and South Carolinians. The Georgian governor lamented that such seizures of food "have been ruinous to the people of the northeastern part of the State."[20]
As conditions at home worsened late in the war more and more soldiers deserted the army to attend to their suffering farms and families.[21]
Deserter and layout gangs
During the course of the war, some Georgians banded together to resist Confederate authorities. Some were Unionists in their beliefs, but others were anti-Confederate due to Confederate government's policy of impressment and conscription. Deserter gangs were made up of those who had deserted from Confederate forces. Layout gangs consisted of those who had avoided conscription by hiding out. Pro-Confederate Georgians often derided these groups as Tories. Some groups consisted of both deserters and draft evaders. The mountains of north Georgia were one location where many such groups operated. Others operated in the swamps of the Alapaha River in Berrien, Coffee, Echols County, Georgia, and Irwin counties. The Okefenokee Swamp was another location that several anti-Confederate forces occupied during the course of the war. Black Jack Island and Soldiers Camp Island are two locations within the swamp where over 1,000 deserters were reported to have hidden. By 1864, the Wiregrass Region of Georgia was no longer fully controlled by the Confederate government due to layout and deserter gangs.[17]
Late in the war, when it was suggested that the Confederacy use its slaves as soldiers, many Confederate newspapers, such as the Atlanta Southern Confederacy in Macon, vehemently objected to the idea of armed black men in the Confederate army, saying that it was incongruous with the Confederacy's goals and views regarding African Americans and slavery. The newspaper said that using black men as soldiers would be an embarrassment to Confederates and their children, saying that although African Americans should be used for slave labor, they should not be used as armed soldiers, opining that:
Such an act on our part, would be a stigma on the imperishable pages of history, of which all future generations of Southrons would be ashamed. These are some of the additional considerations which have suggested themselves to us. Let us put the negro to work, but not to fight.
Georgian Confederates such as Democrat Howell Cobb supported the Macon newspaper's view, saying that the Confederates using black soldiers was "suicidal" and would run contrary to the Confederacy's ideology. Opposing such a move, Cobb stated that African Americans were untrustworthy and innately lacked the qualities to make good soldiers, and that using them would cause many Confederates to quit the army:
The proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification ... You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire ... [Y]ou can't trust negroes ... [D]on't arm them ... If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong ... [T]hey are wanting in every qualification of a soldier.
Despite these protests, a law to raise troops from the slave population was passed by the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865. By mid-April, a few recruiting stations had been established in Macon, Georgia, but the results of these efforts are unknown.[29]
Battles in Georgia
Georgia was relatively free from warfare until late 1863. A total of nearly 550 battles and skirmishes occurred within the state, with the majority occurring in the last two years of the conflict. The first major battle in Georgia was a Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, which was the last major Confederate victory in the west. In 1864 Union general William T. Sherman's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston fought a series of battles, the largest being the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, trying to delay Union armies for as long as possible as he retreated 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 Atlanta on September 2, 1864.
Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May 1864, opposed by the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston's Army of Tennessee withdrew toward Atlanta in the face of successive flanking maneuvers by Sherman's group of armies. In July, Confederate president Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with the more aggressive John Bell Hood, who began challenging the Union Army in a series of damaging frontal assaults. Hood's army was eventually besieged in Atlanta and the city fell on September 2, setting the stage for Sherman's March to the Sea and hastening the end of the war.
A map showing Sherman's March to the Sea from November to December 1864.
In November 1864, Sherman stripped his army of non-essentials, burned the city of Atlanta, and left it to the Confederates. He began his famous Sherman's March to the Sea, living off the land then burning plantations, wrecking railroads, killing livestock, and freeing slaves. Thousands of escaped slaves followed him as he entered Savannah on December 22.[30] After the loss of Atlanta, the governor withdrew the state's militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army. The militia did not try to stop Sherman.[31]
Sherman's March was devastating to both Georgia and the Confederacy in terms of economics and psychology. Sherman himself estimated that the campaign had inflicted $100 million (about $1.4 billion in 2012 dollars)[32] in damages, about one fifth of which "inured to our advantage" while the "remainder is simple waste and destruction."[33] His army wrecked 300 miles (480 km) of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills.[34]
Sherman's campaign of total war extended to Georgian civilians. In July 1864, during the Atlanta campaign, Sherman ordered approximately 400 Roswell mill workers, mostly women, arrested as traitors and shipped as prisoners to the North with their children. There is little evidence that more than a few of the women ever returned home.[35]
The memory of Sherman's March became iconic and central to the "Myth of the Lost Cause" and neo-Confederates. The crisis was the setting for Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the subsequent 1939 film. Most important were many "salvation stories" that tell not what Sherman's army destroyed, but what was saved by the quick thinking and crafty women on the home front, or by a Union soldier's appreciation of the beauty of homes and the charm of Southern women.[36]
County courthouses destroyed
During the war, twelve county courthouses were destroyed by the U.S. Army.
The courthouse of McIntosh County at Darien was destroyed in June 1863 when the U.S. Army burned most of the town.
In December 1864, Sherman captured Savannah before leaving Georgia in January 1865 to begin his Carolinas Campaign. However, there were still several small fights in Georgia after his departure. On April 16, 1865, the Battle of Columbus, was fought on the Georgia-Alabama border. In 1935, the state legislature officially declared this engagement as the "last battle of the War Between the States."[38]
The war left most of Georgia devastated, with many dead and wounded, and the state's economy in shambles. The slaves were emancipated in 1865, and Reconstruction started immediately after the hostilities ceased. Georgia did not re-enter the Union until July 15, 1870, as the last of the former Confederate states to be re-admitted.
The state remained poor well into the twentieth century.
A number of antebellum mansions and plantations in Georgia are preserved and open to the public, particularly around Atlanta and Savannah. Portions of the Civil War-era Western & Atlantic Railroad have historical markers commemorating events during the war, including several sites associated with the Andrews Raid. The Civil War Heartland Leaders Trail includes 46 sites from Gainesville to Millegeville. Another area near Atlanta with Civil War history is in the Sweetwater Creek State Park in Douglas County, Georgia. At this location is one of the last standing buildings burned by General Sherman's army, New Manchester Mill.
^State of Georgia (January 29, 1861). "Georgia Declaration of Causes of Secession". Journal of the public and secret proceedings of the Convention of the people of Georgia. Georgia: State of Georgia. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
^Lepore, Jill (2018). These Truths: A History of the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 292. ISBN978-0-393-63524-9.
^Sarris, Jonathan Dean (2006). A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. p. 2. ISBN0-8139-2549-5.
^Sarris, Jonathan D. (1993). "Anatomy of an Atrocity: The Madden Branch Massacre and Guerrilla Warfare in North Georgia, 1861-1865". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 77 (4): 679–710. JSTOR40582938.
^ abWilliams, David; Williams, Teresa Crisp; Carlson, David (2002). Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press. ISBN978-0813028361.
^Wetherington, Mark V. (2005). Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press. pp. 222–223, 239, 276.
^"Atlanta Southern Confederacy". Macon, Georgia. January 20, 1865. We perceive the public journals continue to urge the measure of putting negroes into the army, and we hear people talking on the street corners in favor of the measure. Put arms in the hands of the slaves, and make them fight for us, they say. We have heretofore expressed our opinion in opposition to this measure, and shall not now repeat what we then said. In continuation of our formerly expressed views, we may add a few additional suggestions now. One speedy practical result of putting negroes in the army would be the peopling of all the swamps of the South with runaway negro deserters. Trained to the use of fire arms, they would depredate everywhere on cattle, hogs, etc., and would soon be forced to resort to robbery and plunder to gain subsistence. Attempts to arrest them would be resisted, and the horrors of a servile war would be realized. Very large numbers would desert and pursue this sort of life. If they did not do this, they would desert to the enemy. With the enemy they know they would get freedom at once. With us, they would get freedom after the war, taking our promises as true. There would exist an immediate certainty of freedom on one side; an uncertainty on the other. A well disposed, faithful, and intelligent slave in this region was recently asked by his master some questions on this very point. The view I have taken of the subject in the above remarks, are simply the views of the slave referred to, and constitutes the substance of his reply to his master. Put, said the negro, the slave into any other position in the service you choose-let him dig, drive teams, build roads, do any other duty, but do not call on him to fight ... The negro is willing to work for us, but not to fight for us. We were passing into the car-shed of this city two days since. Some idle and vicious looking boys were directing some saucy conversation to a negro man of stalwart frame who stood near them. One of the boys said to the negro, "Uncle, why don't you go and fight?" "What I fight for?' asked the Ebon. "For your country," replied the boy. The negro scowled and said instantly, "I have no country to fight for." Now we think the negro was mistaken. We think his lot an enviable one, and that they constitute a privileged class in the community. As the toil of brain and muscle is daily renewed, amid uncertainties, for the procurement of bread for our wife and little ones, we often feel how happy we should be were we the slave of some good and provident owner. Then simple daily toil would fill the measure of duty, and comfortable food and clothing would be the assured reward. While, therefore, we think the negro was mistaken — that the South is emphatically his country while slavery exists — yet we have no idea he can be convinced of the fact sufficiently to take up arms and fight bravely for our cause as his cause, for our country as his country. But waiving all this, and supposing them to fight, and to so greatly aid us that we win our independence, what then? The fighting negroes are to be freed. What are we to do with them 1 Let them remain among us? If so, those who remain slaves may be so in name, but they will not be so in reality. Shall the free slaves then be sent out of the country1 out of the country whose independence they fought to obtain? Certainly no such reward as perpetual exile would-be either honorable to us, or just to them. Such an act on our part, would be a stigma on the imperishable pages of history, of which all future generations of Southrons would be ashamed. These are some of the additional considerations which have suggested themselves to us. Let us put the negro to work, but not to fight.
^Durden, Robert F. (1875). The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University. pp. 156–58.
^Cobb, Howell (January 1865). "Letter to James A. Seddon". Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2016. The proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. But they won't make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery and thereby purchase their aid, than resort to this policy, which leads as certainly to ruin and subjugation as it is adopted; you want more soldiers, and hence the proposition to take negroes into the Army. Before resorting to it, at least try every reasonable mode of getting white soldiers. I do not entertain a doubt that you can, by the volunteering policy, get more men into the service than you can arm. I have more fears about arms than about men, For Heaven's sake, try it before you fill with gloom and despondency the hearts of many of our truest and most devoted men, by resort to the suicidal policy of arming our slaves.
^Hume, Janice; Roessner, Amber (March 2009). "Surviving Sherman's March: Press, Public Memory, and Georgia's Salvation Mythology". Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. 86 (1): 119–137. doi:10.1177/107769900908600108. S2CID144728192.
^"Counties". GEORGIAINFO: An Online Georgia Almanac. Digital Library of Georgia. 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
Myers, Robert Manson, ed. The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War (1972)
"Rebel Yell: The Civil War Diary of John Thomas Whatley, CSA", edited by John Wilson Cowart, is the diary of a confederate soldier whose work included preparing for the defense of Savannah, Georgia. The diary documents his life from March 2, 1862, till November 27, 1864.
Brady, Lisa M. Brady. War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War (University of Georgia Press, 2012)
Brown, Barry L. and Gordon R. Elwell. Crossroads of Conflict: A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia (2010)
Davis, Stephen, What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman's Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012). ISBN0881463981
DeCredico, Mary A. Patriotism for Profit: Georgia's Urban Entrepreneurs and the Confederate War Effort (1990).
Ecelbarger, Gary The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta (2010), ISBN978-0312563998.
Fowler, John D. and David B. Parker, eds. Breaking the Heartland: The Civil War in Georgia (2011)
Frank, Lisa Tendrich. The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers During Sherman's March (LSU Press, 2015)
Gourley, Bruce T. Diverging Loyalties: Baptists in Middle Georgia During the Civil War (2011)
Griffin, Richard W. "The Augusta (Georgia) Manufacturing Company in Peace, War, and Reconstruction, 1847–1877." Business History Review 32.1 (1958): 60–73.
Harrington, Hugh T. Civil War Milledgeville: Tales from the Confederate Capital of Georgia (2005)
Hill, Louise Biles. Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy. (1972)
Miles, Jim. To the Sea: A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West, Sherman's March Across Georgia and Through the Carolinas, 1864–1865 (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 Louisiana State University Press (1977) 612 pages; Governor of Georgia
Savas, Theodore P., and David A. Woodbury. The Campaign for Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea Volume 1. Casemate Publishers, 2013.
Smith, Derek. Civil War Savannah. Savannah, Ga: Frederic C. Beil, 1997. ISBN0-913720-93-3.
Wallenstein, Peter. "Rich Man's War, Rich Man's Fight: Civil War and the Transformation of Public Finance in Georgia," Journal of Southern History (1984) 50#1 pp 15–42 in JSTOR
Wetherington, Mark V. Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia (2009) excerpt and text search
Whelchel, Love Henry. Sherman's March and the Emergence of the Independent Black Church Movement: From Atlanta to the Sea to Emancipation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Whites, Lee Ann. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890 (2000) excerpt and text search
Williams, David. Georgia's Civil War: Conflict on the Home Front. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2017.
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![1862 Bank of the State of Georgia 50 cent banknote; Inscription: "The Bank of the State of Georgia SECOND ISSUE. Acknowledges to owe FIFTY CENTS to the bearer, redeemable "in Confederate Treasury Notes when presented in sums of Five Dollars and upwards." Savannah, December 9, 1862. [signature] Cashier."](/en/File:Recto_Bank_of_the_State_of_Georgia_50_cents_1862_urn-3_HBS.Baker.AC_1104522.jpeg)
