The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Battle of Chickamauga, the largest battle fought in Georgia during the Civil War, took place in Walker County on September 18-20, 1863. Confederate troops under Braxton Bragg prevented Union troops under William S. Rosecrans from entering Georgia, but each side sustained heavy casualties; around 16,000 Union and 18,000 Confederate.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Union general William T. Sherman's troops remove ammunition in wheelbarrows from Fort McAllister (Bryan County) in 1864, following their successful March to the Sea.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Selected Civil War photographs, 1861-1865, #LC-B8171-3503.
On January 21, 1861, the ordinance of secession was publicly signed in a ceremony by Georgia politicians. Two days earlier, delegates to a convention in Milledgeville voted 208 to 89 for the state to secede from the Union.
Fort Pulaski, situated on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, was built in the 1830s and 1840s to defend Savannah. During the Civil War, Union forces captured the fort on April 11, 1862, and controlled it for the remainder of the war.
Photograph by Brooke Novak
Generals from Georgia who served in Virginia during the Civil War include (left to right, top to bottom): James Longstreet, Howell Cobb, Ambrose R. Wright, A. H. Colquitt, T. R. R. Cobb, Robert Toombs, William D. Smith, Paul J. Semmes, and Alfred Iverson Jr.
A $100 bill issued by the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. The printing of paper money during the war resulted in massive inflation throughout the South.
Photograph by Wikimedia
As Union troops entered the state during the Civil War, enslaved Georgians took the opportunity to escape under their protection. The Union army established "contraband" camps to provide food and shelter for the newly freed African Americans.
Photograph by Wikimedia
Generals from Georgia who served in Virginia during the Civil War include (left to right, top to bottom): G. T. Anderson, W. T. Wofford, E. L. Thomas, Henry L. Benning, John B. Gordon, George Doles, Edward Willis, Goode Bryan, and William M. Browne.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis tried to flee as Union soldiers surrounded his camp in Irwinville on May 10, 1865. He had thrown his wife's raglan, or overcoat, on his shoulders, which led to the persistent rumor that he attempted to flee in women's clothes.
Photograph from Wikimedia
From such fortifications as this earthwork in front of Atlanta, Confederate general John B. Hood defended the city from Sherman's attack. Sherman bombarded the city for five weeks, but Hood did not order an evacuation of Atlanta until all rail lines leading into the city had been destroyed.
From Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign, by G. N. Barnard
Photo of an unidentified Civil War bugler; buglers were necessary for the telling of time and duties in the camps as well as guiding the actions of troops in battle.
The Etowah Mounds in Bartow County include one of the largest Indian mounds in North America. The mounds, constructed during the Mississippian Period, served as platforms for public buildings in a town that occupied the site from around 1100 until the 1600s.
Rock Eagle, a stone effigy built by Native Americans during the Woodland Period, circa A.D. 200, is located in Putnam County. The structure, made of quartz cobbles, measures 102 feet across the wings.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
A drawing from Lambert A. Wilmer's Life, Travels and Adventures of Ferdinand de Soto, Discoverer of the Mississippi (1859) depicts Hernando de Soto and his men crossing the Chattahoochee River. The accidental introduction of European diseases by explorers destroyed many of the civilizations along the river's banks.
Courtesy of Florida State Archives, Photographic Collection.
This oil painting by William Verelst shows the founders of Georgia, the Georgia Trustees, and a delegation of Georgia Indians in July 1734. One year later the Trustees persuaded the British government to support a ban on slavery in Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
This sketch, likely a small portion of a larger work, depicts the Battle of Kettle Creek, which took place in Wilkes County on February 14, 1779, during the Revolutionary War. The original caption reads: "Engagement between the Whigs and Tories."
Courtesy of Kettle Creek Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution
The inventor of the cotton gin, Eli Whitney lived in Georgia for just a year, on Catharine Greene's Mulberry Grove plantation near Savannah. After learning of the difficulty planters had with separating seeds from fibers in upland, or "short-staple," cotton, he set out to create a machine that could perform such a task more efficiently. His invention, the cotton gin, revolutionized the southern economy.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
In his 1942 painting Cherokee Trail of Tears, Robert Lindneux depicts the forced journey of the Cherokees in 1838 to present-day Oklahoma.
Courtesy of Woolaroc Museum, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Wilkes County native Robert Toombs, pictured circa 1865, served briefly as the Confederate government's secretary of state and as a brigadier general during the Civil War.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Union prisoners of war are pictured at the Andersonville Prison in Macon County on August 17, 1864. Malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions at the camp led to the deaths of nearly 13,000 of Andersonville's 45,000 prisoners, the highest mortality rate of any Civil War prison.
Courtesy of Civil War Treasures, New-York Historical Society
An 1868 sketch by A. R. Waud illustrates the difficulties faced by the Freedmen's Bureau, caught between white planters on one side (left) and formerly enslaved African Americans on the other (right). The bureau was established in 1865 after Union general William T. Sherman issued his Field Order No. 15, which called for the resettlement of freedpeople on confiscated lands.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
With his New South platform, Henry W. Grady advocated unity and trust between the North and South and helped to spur northern investment in Atlanta industries.
Courtesy of Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Henry Woodfin Grady Papers.
Sharecroppers, pictured in 1910, harvest cotton in Randolph County. Theoretically beneficial to both laborers and landowners, the sharecropping system typically left workers in deep debt to their landlords and creditors from one harvest season to the next.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #ran218-82.
In 1892 Georgia politics was shaken by the arrival of the Populist Party. Led by Thomas E. Watson of McDuffie County, this new party mainly appealed to white farmers, many of whom had been impoverished by debt and low cotton prices in the 1880s and 1890s. The Populists also attempted to win the support of Black farmers away from the Republican Party.
Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society.
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, visit Atlanta in 1935, during the Great Depression. From left: Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, U.S. senator Walter F. George, and U.S. senator Richard B. Russell Jr.
Georgia aviation pioneer Ben Epps is pictured with his first airplane outside his garage in Athens, 1907.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
clr176-83.
U.S. soldiers, pictured in the spring of 1942, undergo training at Fort Benning in Columbus. During World War II Fort Benning was the largest infantry training post in the world.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Students protest segregation at the state capitol building in Atlanta on February 1, 1962. The passage of the federal Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 ended legal segregation across the nation.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Reporters gather at Atlanta's city hall on August 30, 1961, the day that the city's schools were officially integrated. The recommendations of the Sibley Commission to the state legislature in 1960 contributed to the desegregation of schools across Georgia.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection.
Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the first Black students to enroll at the University of Georgia, are pictured here at the end of their first day on campus in January 1961.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Martin Luther King Jr. (second from right) and Ralph David Abernathy (third from right) pray during their arrest in Albany on July 27, 1962. William G. Anderson, the president of the Albany Movement, asked King and Abernathy to help with efforts to desegregate the city.
Augusta native Carl Sanders, elected governor of Georgia in 1962, brought the state into compliance with federal civil rights law during his single term in office.
In 1966 Lester Maddox defeated former governor Ellis Arnall in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in a major political upset. Subsequently, as a result of a close race between Maddox and Republican Bo Callaway, the General Assembly chose Maddox as governor.
U.S. president Jimmy Carter (right) meets with Hamilton Jordan in the Oval Office of the White House in 1977. Jordan served as Carter's chief of staff from 1977 to 1980.
Courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Georgia farmers lead the United States in peanut production, raising approximately 45 percent of the nation's total harvest. Grown in most south Georgia counties, peanuts are the official state crop.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Latino workers plant loblolly pine seedlings in 1999 near Bremen, in Haralson County. Latino immigrants came to Georgia in large numbers during the 1980s and 1990s to work in the agriculture, construction, carpet, and poultry processing industries.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Tourists on St. Simons Island gather outside one of the island's many shops. The island suffered an economic depression at the end of the cotton era in the 1830s, but its fortunes reversed with the arrival of the timber industry in the 1870s. Today St. Simons enjoys a strong tourist industry.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia.
James Oglethorpe, a leader in the British movement to found a new colony in America, set sail for the new world on November 17, 1732, accompanied by Georgia's first settlers.
The Kolomoki Mounds site in Early County is one of the largest prehistoric mound complexes in Georgia and includes at least eight mounds.
Courtesy of Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park
The Middle Paleoindian subperiod features smaller unfluted lanceolate projectile points such as the Suwannee types, among others.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology
The Middle Paleoindian subperiod features fluted or unfluted points with broad blades and constricted handle elements, which may include the Cumberland type. Fluted points (pictured) have a channel or flute running from the base of the point.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology
From the Late Paleoindian subperiod come Dalton and related point types, which are characterized by a lanceolate (lance-shaped) blade outline and a concave base ground on the lateral and basal margins, occasionally well thinned. Blade edges are frequently serrated and beveled.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology
The Early Paleoindian subperiod is characterized by Clovis and related projectile point forms, relatively large lanceolate (lance-shaped) points with nearly parallel sides, slightly concave bases, and single or multiple basal flutes (channels) that rarely extend more than a third of the way up the body.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology
Only one fluted point was found at Macon Plateau, in spite of a massive excavation effort. The fluted point, missing the forward one-third of its length, was of the Clovis type of these artifacts.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology
This type of pottery originated in northwestern Georgia and is found in small quantities throughout the state. It is from the Middle Mississippian subperiod.
Courtesy of Mark Williams
Photograph of ceremonial earthlodge which has been reconstructed and is today part of the Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon, Georgia.
Image from Ken Lund
The King site in Floyd County covers a little more than five acres and is bounded by a defensive ditch and palisade. It was first occupied at some time during the first half of the sixteenth century.
Courtesy of David Hally
Archaeological excavation, carried out intermittently at the Etowah mound site for more than 100 years, has unearthed artifacts such as these figures, which have provided much information about life in the Mississippian Period.
Photograph from Wikimedia
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish-born explorer and conqueror who landed in present-day Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1539 and came to the Georgia area in 1540. Chroniclers of the expedition described the Coosa River valley in glowing terms.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
An illustration of what Sara's Ridge probably looked like during the Middle Archaic Period. The woman in the foreground is cooking with soapstone slabs, while hunters carry a deer toward racks where fish are hung over a fire.
From Beneath These Waters, by S. Kane and R. Keeton
Archaeologists excavated a prehistoric Indian village in Rucker's Bottom near the Savannah River about 500 years after the civilization's height.
