The era of Georgia history about which the public knows the least is undoubtedly the century and a half of Spanish domination. The first European to see Georgia was possibly Juan Ponce de León during his 1513 journey to Florida. The honor of establishing the first permanent settlement within the present U.S. boundaries goes to the gifted Spanish soldier, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. In 1565 he established the Florida town of St. Augustine as part of an expedition destroy French influence in the area. The following year he journeyed northward, stopping probably at St. Catherine’s Island, where the natives, impressed...

As we saw in the previous chapter, Europeans such as Father Ávila had little appreciation for the Indian cultures they encountered along the Atlantic coast. Indigenous lifestyles and religious concepts seemed to them backward and barbaric. Had Caucasians been willing to learn from the natives, however, they would have discovered much of value. For example, the Native American’s reverence for nature stood in sharp contrast to the typical white colonizer’s desire to exploit the environment. It is true that Indians farmed, set fires to control underbrush, and otherwise manipulated nature to their advantage. At the same time, however, they recognized...

The Spanish maintained a presence in Guale until the 168os, when Englishmen and Indians from South Carolina invaded. At the time the Carolinians were strong enough to expel the Spanish, but not strong enough to replace them; so Georgia became “the debatable land” for half a century, with the English, French, and Spanish casting covetous eyes on the area. Ultimately, an English humanitarian named James Edward Oglethorpe ended the debate. A soldier of fortune and member of Parliament, Oglethorpe joined in 1732 with twenty friends and associates to receive from King George II a charter for a new colony. Georgia’s...

The baby of the Thirteen Colonies, Georgia had just begun to grow when the American provinces declared their independence from the mother country. Settled in 1733, Georgia spent two tumultuous decades under the Trust, then another twenty years of modest progress under royal government. The new regime of the 1750s not only permitted slavery but set in place a generous land policy, allowing family heads to claim headrights of one hundred acres for themselves and fifty additional acres for each family member, servant, or slave. The Governor in Council also occasionally sold at a bargain price an additional one thousand...

At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the state still belonged to native Americans. The white population was found mainly along the coast and between the Savannah and the Oconee. The Creeks occupied the rest of south and central Georgia, and the Cherokees had the area north and west of the Chattahoochee. However, the Caucasian population was expanding rapidly. In 1800 there were a hundred thousand white Georgians; by 1830 the number had tripled and by 1840 quadrupled. In contrast, the 1835 Cherokee census enumerated a national total of little more than eighteen thousand, free and slave. The...

On the eve of the Civil War, four of every nine Georgia residents lived in bondage. Almost half the capital in the state was invested in human property. A century earlier Georgians had debated the question of slavery. Now, the state was what Oglethorpe had feared: a rich land with resources concentrated in few hands. To be sure, numerous Georgians owned small farms, but about 20 percent of the free families possessed 90 percent of the wealth.

During the three decades before 1860, the “peculiar institution” was a topic of heated national discussion. Abolitionists saw slavery as a cruel, tyrannical...

For at least thirty years before the Civil War, Georgia and the nation engaged in controversy over slavery vs. freedom and states’ rights vs. federal power. While Georgia politicians defended slavery and states’ rights, they generally advocated moderation. During the nullification crisis of the 1830s, for instance, a Georgia convention expressed disapproval of tariffs but failed to join South Carolina in declaring them null and void. Another state convention supported the Compromise of 1850, establishing a strong fugitive slave law, permitting California to enter the Union as a free state, and allowing the remaining Southwest territories to decide the question...

A Deep South state, Georgia was fortunate to avoid invasion during the early years of the war. Except for action along the coastline, the Union army and navy devoted its attention to theaters further north or west. By 1863, however, Chattanooga and the Tennessee River were in Federal hands, and nothing stood between Georgia and a large Northern army.

In the spring of 1864, General William T. Sherman led a force of over one hundred thousand men down the lines of the state-owned Western and Atlantic Railroad. The destination was Atlanta, a small town of strategic significance as the railroad...

Between 1861 and 1865 Georgia and ten other Confederate states waged an unsuccessful war against the Union. The defeated rebels, however, were soon relieved to find that President Andrew Johnson expected few fundamental changes. He demanded new state constitutions that eliminated wartime debts, the right of secession, and slavery; otherwise, the conventions were permitted to treat former bondsmen as they pleased. Throughout the region, strict limits were placed on black freedom.

By 1867 Congress rebelled against Johnson’s lenient plan. Over the president’s veto Republican lawmakers required southern states again to revise their constitutions, this time giving black men the right...

Reconstruction has been described by historian Numan Bartley as the “revolution that failed.”¹ He suggests that the Republicans challenged planter domination and tried to empower classes who had little influence before the war. Along with civil rights for blacks, Republicans championed economic development through energetic government support of business. Defeat meant the return of the old social order. Back in control, the Democrats wrote the 1877 constitution, which insured rural domination, severely limited the size of the state debt, curtailed government support for education, and prohibited government from endorsing railroad construction bonds.

Once among the top ten states in per...

The period of political equality in Georgia politics was extremely brief. As we have seen, the constitution of 1868, written by the Republicans, gave African-Americans the right to vote, but did not prevent the Georgia legislature from expelling the black members. After Reconstruction a few blacks would be elected to office from time to time, but none held much power.

The federal Fifteenth Amendment prohibited any direct disfranchisement of black men. Consequently, Georgia and the other Southern states resorted to tests for voting that ostensibly had nothing to do with race. The post-Reconstruction 1877 constitution permitted a cumulative poll tax,...

Georgia’s most celebrated case of the early twentieth century began with the murder of a teenage girl at her place of employment on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913. Born in Cobb County, Mary Phagan and her family had moved to Atlanta, where she worked for the National Pencil Company. The factory superintendent was a young Jewish businessman from New York named Leo M. Frank.

On Saturday, April 26, 1913, Mary left home shortly before noon, boarded a trolley, and rode uptown. Only a handful of people were working in the factory on the Confederate holiday, but Mary hoped her boss would...

Patriarchal in race and class relations, Georgia had little use for women’s rights. Southern ladies were honored for purity, self-sacrifice, and altruism, not for their assertion of individual interests. Viewed as fragile and defenseless, women supposedly needed protection from the harsh realities of the world. Their place was in the home, managing the domestic economy and rearing the children. Since their fathers and husbands represented them in public, women did not need the vote—unless they had views and aspirations different from the rest of the family. And such a thought was too heretical for most Georgians to consider.

Nonetheless,...

As noted earlier, the collapse of farm prices generated in the 1890s a Populist revolt. In contrast, a stronger economy and more optimistic spirit accompanied the Progressive Era of the next two decades. Prices rose somewhat, and Georgia farmers expanded production. The peak of prosperity came with World War I. That conflict disrupted European agriculture and created a seemingly insatiable demand for cotton and other crops. The year after the war (1919) the cotton price reached an all-time high of about forty cents a pound.

Nonetheless, the good times could not last. During the war, farmers greatly expanded their cultivated...

From the Civil War until World War II, the South was the nation’s poorest region. Described by Franklin Roosevelt as America’s number one economic problem, the old Confederacy led the nation in illiteracy, infant mortality, and virtually every other negative indicator. The 1940 census recorded a median family income for Georgia that was only 57 percent of the national average. The entry into World War II, however, carried Georgians out of their economic doldrums. The state’s longtime strategy of placing key congressmen on armed services committees paid off, as the military ordered recruits south to train in military camps located...

Protests against white supremacy had a long history in Georgia; as far back as the nineteenth century black activists such as Du Bois, Turner, and Holsey worked tirelessly to plead their cause to an uncaring state and nation. The Civil Rights movement, clearly, had only limited success before World War II and the postwar era. Then a variety of forces persuaded whites as well as blacks that change was imperative.

Once the first cracks appeared in the walls of segregation, African Americans became increasingly impatient to breach the barriers entirely. By the mid-1950s unprecedented numbers of students, workers, and other...

State Senator Jimmy Carter made his first race for governor of Georgia in 1966, when he came in third in the Democratic primary, behind Ellis Arnall and the ultimate winner, Lester Maddox.¹ The young businessman from Plains spent the next four years campaigning for the 1970 election. In that heated contest, he edged out former governor Carl Sanders in the primary and defeated broadcast newsman Hal Suit in the general election.

Despite a relatively liberal record in his home community and as state senator, Carter managed in 1970 to appeal to Maddox-style segregationists. He sought the support of politicians such...

In the last quarter of the twentieth century Georgia was closer to the national mainstream than it had been for years. The people usually voted for the winner in presidential elections. In 1976 they helped send to the White House a Georgia native. Atlanta was known internationally as the host of the 1996 Olympics. Especially in the metropolitan suburbs, one could find many transplants from other states. Attracted by climate and expanding opportunities, the newcomers brought the state fresh perspectives.

Yet commentators spoke of two Georgias. A few affluent urban and suburban counties experienced population explosions and building booms. In...