- History of slavery in Georgia (U.S. state)
Slavery in Georgia is known to have been practiced by the aboriginal residents of the future colony and state for centuries prior to European settlement. However, the penal colony, underJames Oglethorpe , is known to have been the only British colony to have banned slavery before legalizing it (1735). It was eventually legalized by royal decree in 1751.
= Birthplace of the Cotton Empire =Georgia also figures significantly in the history of American slavery because of
Eli Whitney 's invention of thecotton gin , which was first demonstrated to an audience onRevolutionary War hero Gen.Nathanael Greene 's plantation, near Savannah. The cotton gin's invention led both to the explosion ofcotton as a cash crop as well as to the revitalization ofAfrican slavery in the SouthernUnited States , which soon became dependent upon the growth and sale of cotton to manufacturers in the Northern United States and abroad.Georgia slavery during the Civil War
Georgia voted to secede from the Union and join the CSA on January 19, 1861. Years later, in 1865, during his
March to the Sea , Gen.William Tecumseh Sherman signed his Special Field Orders, No. 15, distributing some 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) of confiscated land along the Atlantic Coast fromCharleston, South Carolina to theSt. Johns River inFlorida to the slaves freed by Sherman's forces. Most of the settlers and their descendants are today known as theGullah .Slavery was officially abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, even though then-President
Abraham Lincoln 'sEmancipation Proclamation from two years earlier had already officially freed all slaves within the Confederate States of America.Commemoration
In 2002, the City of Savannah unveiled a bronze statue on River Street in commemoration of the African-Americans who were brought to Georgia as slaves through the city's port.
In 2005,
Wachovia Bank apologized to Georgia's African-American community for its predecessor's (Georgia Railroad and Banking Company ofAugusta, Georgia ) role in the use of at least 182 slaves in the building of that railroad.External links
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1019 "Slavery in Antebellum Georgia"] from the
New Georgia Encyclopedia
* [http://www.afrigeneas.com/library/slaves_georgia.html"Georgia's Slave Population in Legal Records", by David E. Paterson]
* [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/slave-maps/georgia-slave-map.htm "Georgia Slave Map"]
* [http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/sfo15.htm Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15]
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