GA History Exam

Appalachian Plateau, Appalachian Ridge and Valley, Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Coastal Plains

What are the 5 major regions of GA?

Appalachian Plateau

smallest GA region, flat, most Northwest, flat, gently sloping land

Appalachian Ridge and Valley

inbetween Appalachian Plateau and Blue Ridge, valley has rich soil, growth of various hardwoods, used for pasture

Blue Ridge

located Northeast, has the highest mountains in GA, rocky slopes

Coastal Plains

“Pine Barrens”, stretches from A-Ocean 150 miles inland to fall line, flat, sandy soil, 60% of state

Piedmont

foothills, upland, upcountry region, covers 30% of state, rolling hills, most fertile and most populous region of GA

Piedmont

What region of GA is the most populous and has the most fertile land?

Coastal Plains

What region of GA has 60% of the land?

Piedmont

What region of GA has 30% of the land?

Mississippian Period

1000-900 AD

• NA search out areas near rivers with long growing seasons and large deer populations for hunting

• relied more on agriculture (beans, corn, squash)

• built storehouses for surplus

• increased population => increased trading with neighbors and villages became more common

• stratified and herarchial society = one chiefdom

• built villages surrounded by wooden palisades, houses of clay, and earth mounds

• known as “Mound Builders”

corn, beans, squash, hunted deer

What did the NA of Mississippian period grow/eat?

chiefdom that was stratified and hierarchical

What did the society of NA Mississippian become after relying mor eon agriculture?

Spain, Hernando DeSoto

What European country were the first to arrive in GA? Who led the expedition?

disease, exposure, warfare

What was the Spanish impact on NA in GA?

eastern and coastal GA, st catherine Island

In what areas did Eastern GA establish a presence?

St. Catherine’s Island

aka Santa Catalina de Guale

• GA’s oldest known European settlement

• Guale (Wal-lee) the main chief/micro

great Britain and France

What other European nations were interested in GA and tried to establish a presence?

philanthropic, military, economic

What were the 3 reasons for establishing GA?

philanthropic

One of the primary reasons for establishing GA

• provide a new start for the worthy poor of England and refuge for persecuted Protestants in Europe

military

One of the primary reasons for establishing GA

• to establish a defensive buffer against the Spanish in Florida

economic

One of the primary reasons for establishing GA

• to increase Britain’s wealth by establishing a colony which would fit into the mercantilist system and produce exotic items, including silk, wine, and olives

no land ownership, no rum, no slaves

What 3 categories of restrictions did the Trustee place on GA’s settlers?

James Oglethorpe

• a member of Trustee Board

• one of the first settlers in 1733

• founded Savannah, Augusta, Fort Frederica (de facto leader)

• befriended Tomochichi (chief of Yamacraw)

• War of Jenkins, commanded troops to defend against England and Spain

• Battle of Bloody Marsh (1742) british victory over spanish

William Stephens

• sent by Board of Trustees to act as colonial secretary and keep them informed of settlements around GA

• when Oglethorpe was absent, he was the defacto arbiter of disputes

Tomochichi

• chief of Yamacraw tribe

• gave James Oglethorpe permission to settle on Yamacraw Bluff

• conducted trade amongst settlers

War of Jenkins Ear

• 1739-1748

• btwn England and Spain

• solidified English territorial claims and repels Spanish invasion

• James Oglethorpe fought in this battle

Battle of Bloody Marsh

• 1742

• England v. Spanish

• Fort Frederica/ St. Simons Island

• end of spanish attempts to colonize GA

Malcontents

settlers who were tired of Trustees’ restrictions (specifically for land ownership and slavery) and lobbied for change by threatening to no produce promised luxury goods, prompting Trustees to give up charter

increased economic development

How did the introduction of slavery effect Georgia’s development?

Captain John Reynolds, Henry Ellis, James Wright

Georgia’s 3 royal governors

Captain John Reynolds

1754-1757

• GA royal governor

• served the shortest due to unpopularity

Henry Ellis

1757-1760

• GA royal governor

• hated the GA heat but capable

James Wright

1760-1782

• GA royal governor

• served the longest and most influential

• expanded and opened GA’s frontier to farmers by obtaining peacful land cessions from NA (Creek)

white men owning 50 acres

Requirements for voting in colonial GA?

very dependent on Great Britain still

why was GA late in joining rebellion against Great Britain?

George Walton, Lyman Hall, Button Gwinnett

Which 3 Georgians were sent to sign the Declaration of Independence?

Button Gwinnett

Which Declaration of Independence signer got killed in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh?

3 provisions of 1777 Constitution

unicameral legislative assembly, governor elected by legislative assembly, abolish inheritance laws

Nathanial Green

• led Patriot force into GA to reclaim countryside in Revolutionary war

Abraham Baldwin and William Few

• two Georgians to sign the new Constitution (1st southern state to ratify it)

1789 constitution

bicameral legislature (Senate and HofR)

most white men gained right to vote

rice, tobacco, cotton

What new crops developed in GA after Revolutionary war?

Eli whitney

invented cotton gin, catapulted cotton as major cash crop and increased slave and plantation rapidly

Yazoo land fraud

• 1795: GA legislators were bribed with money, land, slaves to sell >40 million acres to 4 companies for 1-1/2 cents per acre

• led by former US senator James Jackson, legislature nullified the sale

• GA had to cede the rest of western lands to US government as an exchange the US government would remove NA from state’s reduced borders

Savannah, Augusta, Louisville, Milledgeville, Atlanta

Name Georgia’s capital from oldest to newest (1733-1865)

Troup Party

• led by William H. Crawford and George M. Troup

• aristocratic/planter party

• stronger in settled areas of state (lowcountry)

• agreed with Clark party about Indian removal

Clark Party

• led by John Clark (son of Elijah Clark from Revolutionary War)

• identified with upcountry democratic frontiersmen

• small farmer group

• stronger in newer areas of state (upcountry)

• agreed with Troup party about Indian removal

Upper Creek and Lower Creek

located in northern AL // located in western GA

• represented by Alexander McGillivray (part creek), at first ceded land west of Ocmulgee River

Creek War

1813-1814

• Upper creek (red sticks) attacked Fort mims and killed 250 people

• Andrew Jackson, Lower creek and Cherokee fought against Red sticks

• Victory of Creek Battle of Horsehoe Bend: forcing Creek to cede most of their Alabama land

• eventually Georgian pressured Creek to give up GA lands using William McIntosh as Creek representative and signed Treaty of Indian Springs

Treaty of Indian springs

signed by William McIntosh who was Creek representative (part white/part creek), later executed

• granted large chunk of Creek land to GA

• signed another treaty in 1825 giving all remaining creek land and eventually all land was given to GA in 1826

Sequoyah

cherokee Indian

• 1821: created syllabary

• 1827: Cherokee established a written constitution and elected government

• had bilingual newspaper: Cherokee Phoenix

• owned houses, schools, lawyers, teachers

Worcester v. GA

U.S supreme court ruled that GA laws could not apply to Cherokee-controlled lands, but President Jackson refused to enforce courts decision

Treaty of New Echota

Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot signed

• Cherokee giving up land in exchange for land in Indian territory (Oklahoma)

• resulting in trail of tears

cotton, slavery, railroad, ports

What accounted for GA’s prosperity in antebellum period?

river

major forms of transportation during antebellum period?

Central Railroad

• privately owned by investors

• ran Savannah and Macon

Georgia Railroad

• privately owned by investors

• ran Augusta and Atlanta

Western and Atlantic Railroad

• state funded

• ran Atlanta and Chattanooga Tennessee

Planters

• 5% of GA population

• person owning 20 or more slaves

• owned the best land and had the most wealth

• dominated GA General Assembly

Middling Planters

• 14% of GA population

• owned 5-10 slaves

• economically well off but not wealthy to won large plantations

• combined producing goods for home consumption and cotton or rice for market

yeoman farmers

• 75% of GA population

• owned own land but not wealthy

• owned 1-5 slaves but msot owned none

• safety first farmers, produced family yearly needs and sold surplus to supplement income

poor landless whites

• “poor white trash” - landless white is defined as an individual who does not own their own property

• including young men yet to inherit, tenant farmers who rented land, urban laborers, skilled artisans, or mechanics

free persons of color

• also called free blacks

• 1% of entire balck population inhabited middle ground

• neither slaves nor were completely free

• not citizens and could not vote or hold office

• had to pay a specific tax to live in an given area

• lived and worked in upper south

• skilled craftsman

• First African Baptist Church in Savannah

gang labor

what type of work did most slaves perform in GA?

• 30+ slaves

• working sunup-sundown under supervision fo an overseer

Community

What was the advantage of living on a large plantation?

Westward expansion

Even though slavery existed even before the creation of the U.S., what caused the issue of slavery to become so divisive during the antebellum period?

Howell Cobb

• speaker of the House of U.S and helped negotiate the Compromise of 1850

Compromise of 1850

Congress admitted California as a free state, in exchange the the South got a tougher fugitive slave law

• slavery was decided by popular sovereignity, allowing people of the territory to decide the issue of slavery

radicals/fire-eaters

southerners led by South carolina, opposed the Compromise of 1850, and said that the constitution does not allow congress to prohibit slavery anywhere, leading to the Georgia platform

Georgia Platform

convention where Charles j. Jenkins proposed that Georgia would abide by the compromise as long as the North fulfilled the compromise’s main points, thus delaying the South’s break-off from the union for a little while

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854

Congress opened new 2 territories to allow building a transcontinental railroad, slavery being decided by popular sovereignty

Joseph E Brown

• GA governor

• convinced GA citizens that they would be greatly affected by Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves

• warning racial equality and race mixing and job mixing

• scaring with white farmers and taxation

• advocated for GA seceding from Union along South Carolina

• seizure of Fort Pulaski

• became 5th state to seceded from union

limited power of central government and prohibits slavery abolishment

Difference of Confederate constitution and U.S constitution?

April 12, 1861

start of civil war?

manpower, money, supplies

What did GA contribute to the Confederacy?

• 120,000 men from GA to serve in confederacy

• important munitions and clothing supplier

• 8 of confederacy’s largest arsenals were in GA

• Augusta Powder works was the largest in the workd for a little but

• Atlanta served as depot center

raids and ginboat skirmishing

What type of fighting did GA experience in 1861-1863?

Battle of Chickamauga

1863

• war arrived at NW GA

• Confederacy were victorious but unable to hold Union off from entering GA, by William t Sherman

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

General Johnston and John Bell Hood couldn’t stop the Union advance

Fall of Atlanta

September 1864

• Union Army captured Atlanta

• significant for 2 reasons

  • militarily: hub of southern railroad

  • politically: fall, insured Lincoln would be reelected

Sherman’s March to the Sea

November 1864

• burning of Atlanta to the coast

• December 1864, union arrived at Savannah

• General William Hardee ordered troops in savannah to evacuate and they peacefully surrendered

• Savannah was saved

Reconstruction

1865-1877

• civil war ended in 1865

• GA Reconstruction ended in 1871 when state was redeemed

• 2 forms of national reconstruction

  • Presidential Reconstruction

  • Congressional Reconstruction

Presidential Reconstruction

1865-1867

• focused on quick reconciliation and lenient terms for the South

• lead by Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson

• lenient and minimal requirements

• nullify secession ordinances, abolished slavery (ratify 13th amendment), 10% of voters take loyalty oath

Congressional Reconstruction

1867-1877

• demanded systemic reform, harsh penalties for former Confederates, strict legal protections for newly freed African Americans

• lead by radical republicans (Thaddeus Stevens)

• ratify 14th amendment (equal protection) voting rights (amendments 15)

• divides the south into military districts

Black Codes

• similar in nature to slave codes

• AA were given legal rights like marriage, but not allowed to vote, serve on juries, or testify against whites in court

• vagrancy laws allowed white southerners to compelled freedmen to return to work

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

• white southerners resorted to intimidation, violence and terror against recently freed AA

Tunis Campbell

minister and political

• organized African American militia for protection during the KKK and Reconstruction period

Military Reconstruction Act

1867

• passed by congress

• returned the South to military rule

• also provided African Americans the right to vote

Freedmen’s Bureau

• worked to ensure both sides were protected through written contracts

• Goal: was to establish a cash wage labor system

• sharecropping was a part of the compromise between freedmen who wanted landownership and planters who needed cheap labor and wanted a return to using the gang labor which had characterized slavery

sharecropping

• compromise between freedmen who wanted landownership and planters who needed cheap labor and wanted a return to using the gang labor which had characterized slavery

  • laborer was provided a plot of land to cultivate

  • freedmen worked their allotted plots of land in family groups and without close supervision

• tenant farming (step-up from sharecropping) → tenant provided his own equipment and paid cash fro renting the land

Constitution of 1868

• convention refused to lodge AA in Milledgeville so they moved the convention to Atlanta (also the move of the capital)

• most democratic constitution of the time

• includes specific wording giving AA the right to vote

• BUT GA used this to their advantage and did not give AA the right to be in office, resulting in expulsion of AA from the Assembly in September 1868

carpetbaggers

northerners that live in the South involved in the Republican party in GA

derogatory term for an outsider who moves into a new area and attempts to exploit or dominate the local population for personal, financial, or political gain. It is almost exclusively used to describe opportunistic politicians who run for office in a place where they have no genuine ties or long-term residency

• resulted in using these systems as dealing with the shortage of currency = shortage of currency → allowed labor force control thus becoming a permanent part of GA agricultural economy

Henry McNeal Turner

• AA

• served in one of Union Army’s black regiments

• actively campaigned as a Republican politician and served as a delegate at the 1868 constitutional convention

Rufus Bullock

• 1868 elections

• Republican candidate defeated John B Gordon

• new legislature ratified 14th Amendment - defined citizenship and guaranteed all citizens equal protection of the law

• GA reapplied and was readmitted to the Union with full representation

Camilla Massacre

• in Camilla GA, group of AA arrived for a political meeting

• they were attacked by a crowd of whites and showed the difficulty of protecting African Americans from southern whites who were determined to resist changes

• result of this caused GA to lose representation and had to ratify the 15th amendment to rejoin the union, restoring AA back to General assembly by 1871

Solid South

• electroal dominance of the Democratic Party for nearly a century following the Civil war and reconstruction

• led by Bourbons

  • GA political leaders that tried to eliminate many symbols that linked them to Republican and Reconstruction

• drived by white resentment (anger towards republican party (Abe’s)) and white supremacy (intense segregation and Jim Crow laws)

Robert Toombs

• former senator and self-proclaimed unreconstructed rebel, led the effort to call a new constitutional convention

Constitution of 1877

• characterized by ecxtreme conservation and anti-industry/buisiness restrictions

• retain power in rural counties at the expense of urban ones

• creating County Unit System

  • system of legislative apportionment

  • insuring that rural counties would be able to control the General Assembly in spite of urban population growth

Henry Grady

editor of Atlanta Constitution

• an urban booster to attract northern industry to GA

• preached a gospel of sectional reconciliation and political stability

• tried to convince northerners that the south accepted the postwar racial settlement

• thanks to Grady, Atlanta grew in size and wealth

• but did not come to pass in the late 19th century due to most GA’s beign farmers and many of them struggling

  • farmers had to rely on capital

  • timing and market conditions

  • price of cotton was falling due to overproduction

  • price of supplies increased

  • currency deflated

• farmers r in a cycle of debt = losing their land to merchants

Farmers alliance

solution to farmer’s cycle of debt

• started in Texas spread to South and Midwest

• advocated a subtreasury plan whereby farmers could store their non-perishable crops in warehouses and use them for collateral for loans

• in GA

  • used jute bags to store their cotton

  • 1888 boycotted a jute bag and succeeded in getting the industry to lower the price, demonstrating the success of collective action

• moved to legislation “Alliance Legislature” failed ot meet expectations because few representatives fought for alliance measures and abandoned the democratic party

Populous Party

• People’s Party

• Alliancemen abandoned the Democratic party for this party

• William L Peek became the party’s candidate

• represented more than a political challenge to the Democratic Party

• conservatives thought that the new party was a threat to white vote

• failure 1896: most GA Populists began migrating back to democratic party and PP would never be a real challenge to the Democratic Party