Georgia jôr´jə , state in the SE United States, the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be founded. It is bordered by Florida (S), Alabama (W), Tennessee and North Carolina (N), and South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean (E).

Facts and Figures

Area, 58,876 sq mi (152,489 sq km). Pop. (2000) 8,186,453, an 26.4% increase since the 1990 census. Capital and largest city, Atlanta. Statehood, Jan. 2, 1788 (4th of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., Brasstown Bald, 4,784 ft (1,459 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Empire State of the South. Motto, Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation. State bird, brown thrasher. State flower, Cherokee rose. State tree, live oak. Abbr., Ga.; GA

Geography

Georgia is the largest state E of the Mississippi River and has three main topographical areas. Extending inland from the coast is a low coastal plain that covers the southern half of the state. In mountainous N Georgia are the Appalachian Plateau, the valley and ridge province, and the Blue Ridge province. Bridging these two sections and embracing about one third of the state is the Piedmont foothill region in central Georgia. A number of islands, part of the Sea Islands chain, lie off Georgia's coastline.

The state is well drained by many rivers, including the Savannah, which forms the boundary with South Carolina; the Ocmulgee and the Oconee, which merge in the southeast to form the Altamaha; the Chattahoochee, which forms part of the Alabama boundary and joins with the Flint in the extreme southwest corner of the state to form the Apalachicola; and the Saint Marys, which rises in the large Okefenokee Swamp and forms part of the Georgia-Florida line. The most important cities are Atlanta , Columbus , Savannah , Macon , and Albany .

Economy

Although the trade and service sectors supply the majority of jobs in Georgia, manufacturing and agriculture remain important to the state's economy. In addition, federal facilities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, near Atlanta; Fort Benning, near Columbus; and the Kings Bay naval base, contribute to the economy.

Cotton, once Georgia's most valuable crop, has declined in importance; in the 1990s it was rivaled by peanuts, tobacco, and corn. Georgia is easily the nation's largest producer of peanuts. Tobacco is the principal crop in the central and southern sections of the state, peanuts in the southwest. Livestock and poultry raising account for the largest share of farm income; broilers, eggs, and cattle are major products.

The manufacture of textiles and textile products has long been Georgia's leading industry, centering mainly around Columbus, Augusta, Macon, and Rome. Other major manufactures include transportation equipment, foods, paper products, and chemicals. Automobile manufacturing is important around Atlanta. Much of Georgia is heavily forested with pine, and the state is a leading producer of lumber and pulpwood. Although the state is rich in minerals, mining is not as important as manufacturing and agriculture. The most valuable minerals produced are clays, stone, kaolin, iron ore, sand, and gravel. Georgia is famous for its fine marble.

With its moderate winter climate and its Southern charm and beauty, the state is a popular vacation area. The Sea Islands are especially noted for their scenery and resorts. Warm Springs, established with the help of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the treatment of poliomyelitis, is now a historical landmark. Georgia's other attractions include Okefenokee Swamp, a large wilderness area; Chattahoochee and Oconee national forests, with facilities for hunting and fishing; Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park; Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (see National Parks and Monuments , table); and Stone Mountain , near Atlanta, on which is carved a Confederate memorial.

Government, Politics, and Higher Education

Georgia's constitution provides for an elected governor who serves for a term of four years. The legislature, called the general assembly, is made up of a senate with 56 members and a house of representatives with 180 members. Members of both houses are elected to terms of two years. Georgia sends 13 representatives and 2 senators to the U.S. Congress and has 15 electoral votes. Zell Miller, elected governor in 1990 and reelected in 1994, was succeeded by another Democrat, Roy E. Barnes, elected in 1998, but Barnes lost his 2002 reelection bid to Republican Sonny Perdue. Perdue was reelected in 2006; Republican Nathan Deal was elected to succeed Perdue in 2010.

Leading educational institutions include the Univ. of Georgia, at Athens; Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State Univ., Emory Univ., Clark College, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morris Brown College, all at Atlanta; Agnes Scott College, at Decatur; and Mercer Univ. and Wesleyan College, at Macon.

History

Early Exploration and Conflicting Claims

The Creek and Cherokee inhabited the Georgia area when Hernando De Soto and his expedition passed through the region c.1540. The Spanish later established missions and garrisons on the Sea Islands. In 1663, Charles II of England made a grant of land that included Georgia to the eight proprietors of Carolina. However, Spain claimed the whole eastern half of the present United States and protested the grant. The English ignored the protest, and the English-Spanish contest for the territory between Charleston (S.C.) and St. Augustine (Fla.) continued intermittently for almost a century. England became interested in settling Georgia as a buffer colony to protect South Carolina from Spanish invasion from the south.

Oglethorpe's Colony

In June, 1732, the English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe received a charter from George II (for whom the colony was named) to settle the colony of Georgia and form a board of trustees to manage it. Oglethorpe planned to settle Georgia as a refuge for debtors in England. The first colonists, led by Oglethorpe, reached the mouth of the Savannah River in Feb., 1733. On a bluff c.18 mi (29 km) upstream, the colonists laid out the first town, Savannah. In 1739 war broke out between Spain and England. Fighting occurred in Georgia, and in 1742, near Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island, Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish in the battle of Bloody Marsh, thereby effectively ending Spain's claim to the land N of the St. Marys River.

Georgia's early settlers included English, Welsh, Scots Highlanders, Germans, Italians, Piedmontese, and Swiss. Jews, Catholics, and settlers from other American colonies were at first barred. Immigrants fell generally into two groups: charity settlers, who were financed by the trustees, and adventurers, who paid their own way and came to receive the best land grants. The trustees had hoped that the colony would produce silk to send back to England, and early colonists were required to plant a specific number of mulberry trees for the cultivation of silkworms. The scheme, however, came to nothing. At first slavery was prohibited, but this and other restrictions impeded the colony's growth, and by the time Georgia became a royal colony in 1754, most of the restrictions had been abolished.

Georgia flourished as a royal colony. It fitted well into the British mercantile system, exporting rice, indigo, deerskins, lumber, naval stores, beef, and pork to England and buying there the manufactured articles it needed. Georgia's citizens were slower to resent those acts of the crown that exasperated the other colonies, but by June, 1775, Georgian patriots had begun to organize, and the following month delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Georgia's colonists were about equally divided into Loyalists and patriots during the American Revolution, but the patriots, exposed to Loyalist Florida on the south and Native American tribes on the west, fared badly. In Dec., 1778, the British captured Savannah, and by the end of 1779 they held every important town in Georgia.

Statehood

After American independence had been won, Georgia was the first Southern state to ratify (1788) the Constitution. Georgia came into conflict with the federal government over states' rights when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), that an individual could sue a state, a decision equally distasteful to other states as well as to Georgia. (This decision was later nullified by the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)

Further difficulties with the federal government stemmed from the related issues of the removal of Native Americans and land speculation centering around the Yazoo land fraud . In the midst of the Yazoo controversy, Georgia ceded (1802) its western lands to the United States in return for $1,250,000 and a pledge that the Native Americans would be removed from Georgia lands. By 1826 the Creek had yielded their lands, but in 1827, the Cherokee set themselves up as an independent nation. The U.S. Supreme Court held (1832) that the state had no jurisdiction over the Cherokee, but President Jackson declined to support the chief justice, and in 1838 the Cherokee were forced to migrate west to government land in present day Oklahoma. The path of their journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

Cotton and the Confederacy

With the invention of the cotton gin (1793) by Eli Whitney, Georgia began to prosper as a cotton-growing state. Cotton was grown under the plantation system with labor supplied by slaves. By the 1840s a textile industry was established in the state. Although Georgia was committed to slavery before the Civil War, state leaders opposed secession. However, successive defeats on the national scene, culminating in the election of Lincoln as president, fostered separatist sentiment in the state.

On Jan. 19, 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and shortly afterward joined the Confederacy . The coast was soon blockaded by the Union navy, and in Apr., 1862, Fort Pulaski (which had been seized by the state in Jan., 1861) was recaptured by Union forces. Georgia became a major Civil War battlefield when, in 1864, Union Gen. W. T. Sherman launched his successful Atlanta campaign . On Nov. 15, 1864, Sherman set fire to Atlanta, and his subsequent march through Georgia to the sea, culminating in the fall (Dec.) of Savannah, left in its path a scene of great destruction.

The Long Aftermath of the Civil War

During Reconstruction , Georgia at first refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and was consequently placed under military rule. During the period of military rule Rufus B. Bullock, a radical Republican, was elected governor. Corruption prevailed during Bullock's administration (1868–71), but after the legislature approved the Fifteenth Amendment (the Thirteenth and Fourteenth having been ratified earlier), Georgia was readmitted (1870) to the Union, and Bullock resigned. Georgia's Democratic party has dominated the state's politics since the end of Reconstruction.

The textile industry recovered from the effects of the war and was expanding by the 1880s. Atlanta, which had succeeded Milledgeville as the capital in 1868, grew into a thriving industrial city, largely due to its importance as the center of an expanding regional railroad network.

The effect of the war on agriculture—which had formerly been dependent on slave labor—was more serious. The breakup of large plantations resulted in the rise of tenant farming and sharecropping, systems often accompanied by poverty and abuse. After World War I agriculture suffered further setbacks as the boll weevil caused great destruction to cotton crops and the soil became exhausted through erosion and overuse. A farm depression began in Georgia long before the general depression of the 1930s. The state weathered the depression, but its subsequent history was marked by political and racial conflict.

The Struggle for Racial Equality

In 1941, Gov. Eugene Talmadge caused nationwide commotion by discharging three educators in the state university system alleged to have advocated racial equality in the schools. The state university system lost its accreditation for a time as a result of Talmadge's action. Talmadge was defeated in the 1942 Democratic primary by Ellis G. Arnall.

Under Arnall's administration, Georgia became the first state to grant the vote to 18-year-olds, and in 1946 (on the strength of a U.S. Supreme Court decision) blacks voted for the first time in the Georgia Democratic primary. Among Arnall's other administrative acts was the adoption of a new constitution in Aug., 1945. The 1945 constitution, which, in amended form, is still in effect in the state, contained a provision for Georgia's notorious county-unit system. This system for nominating state officials in Democratic primaries led to the political control of urban areas by sparsely populated rural areas.

The integration of public schools, following the 1954 Supreme Court decision, was strenuously opposed by many Georgians. However, in 1961 the legislature abandoned a "massive resistance" policy, and Georgia became the first state in the deep South to proceed with integration without a major curtailment of its public school system. Racial tensions persisted, however, and in May, 1970, racial disorders broke out in Augusta.

Georgia's county-unit system (held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Apr., 1950) was abolished by federal court order in 1962. In 1972, the Georgian Andrew Young became the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress; he later became mayor of Atlanta. Jimmy Carter , a Democrat and the 39th president of the United States (1977–81), had been governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975; his administration brought attention to the state, whose urban centers, especially Atlanta, were beginning to experience rapid growth. Today, roughly one half of the jobs in Georgia are in the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is sprawling into formerly rural districts, highlighting the cultural and economic gaps between Georgia's rural and urban areas.

Bibliography

See H. E. Bolton, The Debatable Land (1968); R. H. Shyrock, Georgia and the Union in 1850 (1926, repr. 1968); R. M. Myers, ed., The Children of Pride (1972); J. Crutchfield, ed., Georgia Almanac, 1989–90 (1990); N. V. Bartley, The Creation of Modern Georgia (2d ed. 1990).

GEORGIA

Georgia is located in the southeastern United States, where it is bordered in the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, in the south by Florida, in the west by Alabama, and in the east by South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean. The country's twenty-first largest state, Georgia has a total area of 58,910 square miles. In the 1990s Georgia's estimated population of 7.64 million ranked it tenth among the fifty states. During the nineteenth century the state boasted a thriving agricultural economy, but by the end of the twentieth century Georgia's manufacturing and service industries were its most successful and buoyant. The state's economic center is located in Atlanta, which is both Georgia's largest city and its capital.

The colony of Georgia was founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe, a soldier, politician, and philanthropist who had been granted a charter to settle the territory by Great Britain. Named after the English King George II, Georgia was the last of the 13 British colonies established in the United States. Georgians were among the first colonists to sign the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolution (1775–1783) Georgia was the fourth state overall and the first southern state to ratify the federal Constitution in January of 1788.

Georgia's support for the federal government began to wane during the early 1800s, when Congress proposed legislation to outlaw slavery in the Western territories. Georgia's rich cotton and rice plantations depended on slavery, and Georgians feared that the abolition movement would eventually reach their state. The Missouri Compromise (1820), which designated the states and territories in question as slave or free states, was passed by Congress largely through the efforts of Georgia Representatives Alexander H. Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Howell Cobb. This legislation helped calm tempers in the South, but it was only a temporary fix. On January 19, 1861 Georgia became one of the eleven Confederate states to secede from the Union. Less than three months later the nation was at war.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) left much of Georgia in ruins. Union General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) captured Atlanta in September of 1864, and began his famous "march to the sea" in November. Before his troops overtook Savannah in December, houses were looted, bridges were burned, and railroads, factories, mills, and warehouses were destroyed. Georgia residents were not the only ones in their state to suffer during the war, almost 50,000 Union soldiers were held prisoner at a camp in Andersonville, Georgia. Approximately one-fourth of those prisoners died from exposure, malnutrition, starvation, and filth. The prison superintendent was later convicted of war crimes before a U.S. military court and hung.

Georgia was readmitted to the Union on July 15, 1870 after it ratified the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. Those amendments abolished slavery and guaranteed the former slaves equal protection under the law and the right to vote. The amendments did not, however, protect thousands of black Georgia residents from being persecuted by white terrorists. Nor did they prevent the state government from enacting so-called Jim Crow laws that legalized segregation in Georgia. Such laws remained on the books until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in all public places. Georgia native Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) played an essential role in bringing about the passage of that civil rights law.

Other famous Americans have also hailed from Georgia. Jimmy Carter (1924–) is the only U.S. president who claims Georgia as his birthplace. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (1948–) is one of four Georgians to have sat on the nation's high court. Baseball players Raymond "Ty" Cobb (1886–1961) and Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (1919–1972) are among the legendary Georgia athletes. Eli Whitney (1765–1825) may be the most famous Georgian from before the twentieth century. Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton so efficient to clean that the crop became the foundation for Georgia's economy in the nineteenth century.

Cotton would not have the same importance to the Georgia economy of the twentieth century. In the 1920s the boll weevil decimated the state's cotton industry. The Great Depression (1929–1939) further weakened the cotton farmer and by 1940 the old plantation system was gone. At the same time, World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) hastened the growth of manufacturing in Georgia. Federal dollars poured into state businesses that built and sold airplanes, ships, and munitions for the war effort.

By the end of the twentieth century manufacturing was the state's leading revenue-generating activity, with the textile industry being its oldest and largest such business. Of the almost four million persons employed in Georgia during the early 1990s, however, about 25 percent worked in the services sector, 23 percent worked in wholesale or retail trade, and only 15 percent worked in manufacturing. Three percent of Georgia residents worked on farms where cotton was only one of several crops grown for a profit. Tobacco, peanuts, peaches, and watermelons have also proven lucrative to grow in the state.

Tourism was another revenue-generating activity for the state in the twentieth century, with visitors to the state spending nearly $9.2 billion annually. The state's several national parks and forests, 100-mile oceanic coastline, balmy winter temperatures, and verdant plant life make it a nationwide attraction. In 1996 Atlanta attracted millions of people from around the world for the summer Olympics, which were generally considered a success despite a bombing that killed two people.

Both residents and visitors have contributed to the host of nicknames by which the state of Georgia is known. Unofficially called the Peach State, Georgia has also been affectionately referred to as the Peanut State, the Buzzard State, and the Empire State of the South. Over the past quarter-century Georgia has become known in some parts as the Bulldog State acquiring that moniker in conjunction with the successful academic and athletic programs at the University of Georgia, where the school mascot is a bulldog.

See also: Boll Weevil Infestation, King Cotton, Sherman's March on Georgia

FURTHER READING

Hepburn, Lawrence R. The Georgia History Book. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Institute of Government, 1982.

Lane, Mills. The People of Georgia: An Illustrated History, 2nd ed. Savannah, GA: Library of Georgia, 1992.

"Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, 1999," [cited May, 12 1999] available from the World Wide Web @ encarta.msn.com/EncartaHome.asp/.

Sams, Cindy. "Georgia Farmers Find Peanuts Still the Crop to Grow." Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News, October 8, 1998.

"State of Georgia Homepage," [cited April 20, 1999] available from the World Wide Web @ www.state.ga.us/.

Georgia A protectorate of the Russian Empire since 1783. Russian attempts to impose its own culture and language upon the Georgians led to a series of uprisings in the nineteenth century, which were brutally suppressed. It declared its independence at the outbreak of the Russian Civil War (1918), but was subjected again by the Red Army in 1921. In 1922 it joined the USSR as part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Republic (together with Armenia and Azerbaijan), becoming a separate Soviet Republic in 1936. Gorbachev's reformist policies revived nationalist hopes for independence, which were expressed at the parliamentary elections in 1990, won by the oppositional ‘round table’ party coalition. Under its leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, it became independent in April 1991. His government became increasingly corrupt, however. His refusal to leave office despite the opposition of the National Guard led to civic unrest bordering on civil war. Gamsakhurdia fled on 6 January 1992, and was eventually succeeded by Shevardnadze. Gamsakhurdia's supporters continued to offer resistance even after the death of their leader on 31 December 1993. Too weak to maintain control over the separatist republic of Abkhazia, Shevardnadze was ultimately only able to restore some order within Georgia itself with implicit Russian assistance. This followed his agreement to allow the continued presence of 20,000 Russian troops, and the Russian use of its Black Sea port of Poti. Georgia was also in desperate need of Russian economic assistance, as in 1994 its Gross Domestic Product had declined to 25 per cent of its 1991 levels. Thereafter the economy stabilized, as inflation was brought under control and state spending reined in. The state nevertheless struggled to establish its authority against economic corruption, a thriving black market and rampant tax evasion. In 2000, the Justice Minister, Mikhail Saakashvili, led a campaign against government corruption. He was forced to resign, and became leader of the opposition movement. Following rigged elections in favour of Shevardnadze in 2002, Saakashvili led a peaceful ‘rose revolution’ which toppled the president. Saakashvili was elected President in January 2004 in fair elections, with over 80% of the popular vote.