History of Georgia (U.S. state)

The history of Georgia in the United States of America spans pre-Columbian time to the present day. The area was inhabited by Native American tribes for thousands of years. A modest Spanish presence was established in the late 1500s, mostly centered on Catholic mission work. The Spanish were largely gone by the early 1700s, though they remained in nearby Florida, and their presence ultimately left little impact on what would become Georgia. (Most Spanish place names in Georgia date from the 19th century, not from the age of colonization.)

English settlers arrived in the 1730s, led by James Oglethorpe. The name "Georgia", after Britain's King George II, dates from the creation of this colony. Slavery was forbidden in the colony, but the ban was overturned in 1749 due to the pressure of George Whitfield and others. Slaves numbered 18,000 by the American Revolution.

The citizens of Georgia agreed with the other 12 colonies concerning trade rights and issues of taxation. On April 8, 1776, royal officials had been expelled and Georgia's Provincial Congress issued a constitutional document that served as an interim constitution until adoption of the state Constitution of 1777. The British occupied much of Georgia from 1780 until shortly before the official end of the American Revolution in 1783.

The post-revolutionary years were a time of growth after Indian Removal, and economic prosperity for white planters. The new cotton gin, enabled the cultivation and processing of short-staple cotton in the inland and upcountry. This stimulated the cotton boom in Georgia and much of the Deep South, promoting a cotton-based economy dependent on slave labor. Most of the whites, however, owned no slaves and tended their own small farms. Full suffrage for white men led to a highly competitive political system.

In February 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and joined other Southern states to form the Confederate States of America. Georgia contributed nearly one hundred thousand soldiers to the war effort. The first major battle in the state was the Battle of Chickamauga, a Confederate victory, and the last major Confederate victory in the west. In 1864, William T. Sherman's armies invaded Georgia as part of the Atlanta Campaign. The burning of Atlanta (which was a commercially vital railroad hub but not yet the state capital) was followed by Sherman's March to the Sea, which devastated a wide swath from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864. These events became iconic images in the state's memory and dealt a devastating economic blow to the entire Confederacy.

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