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| Georgia
History
Many civilizations lived where
present-day Georgia is. Paleo-Indian
relics dating from 10,000 years ago have been
found near Eatonton. In 1733, when Georgia
became the 13th colony of an emerging nation,
only the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee
Indians remained here. More European
colonists followed the original
settlers. Georgia became a slave
state, and in 1776, along with the other
colonies, declared its independence from
Britain. It didn't take long, though, for
Georgia to fall to the British, and the state
suffered economically even after the
Revolutionary War ended. In 1793, Eli
Whitney invented the cotton gin, and the state
began to boom with cotton production. Slave
labor enabled Georgia to emerge from its severe
economic slump. In 1861, that changed.
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The Civil War ravaged much of Georgia, and
that history is still evident today in the
preserved battlefield sites such as Chickamauga
and the prison Andersonville. In 1864,
General W. T. Sherman occupied Atlanta and then
sent 60,000 troops on a path of destruction from
the city to the sea, and many towns along the
way were burned to the ground.
Atlanta had to rebuild from scratch. Other
towns, such as Savannah, were spared and are
today a time capsule of a bygone era.
Georgia struggled with segregation for many
years after the War. In 1929, Martin
Luther King was born in Atlanta and would go on
to lead the American civil rights
movement. In 1976, Jimmy Carter became the
first president from Georgia, and in 1996, the
summer Olympic Games were held in Atlanta.
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Georgia Journeys |
