The Civil War in Georgia: A New Georgia Encyclopedia Companion

Overview: The Civil War in Georgia

5 } Overview: The Civil War in Georgia The South, like the rest of the country, was forever altered by the dramatic events of the Civil War. Few states, however, were more integral to the outcome of the conflict than Georgia, which provided an estimated 120,000 soldiers for the Confederacy, as well as 3,500 black troops and a few hundred whites for the Union cause. Georgia’s agricultural output was critical to the Confederate war effort , and because Georgia was a transportation and industrial center for the Confederacy, both sides struggled for control of the state. Some of the most important battles of the war were fought on Georgia soil, including Chickamauga, Resaca, and Kennesaw Mountain, while the battles of Peachtree Creek, Bald Hill (Atlanta), Ezra Church, and Jonesboro were significant turning points during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Perhaps most important, one can argue that the Civil War’s outcome was decided in Georgia with the Atlanta campaign and U.S. president Abraham Lincoln’s subsequent reelection. Georgians’ Road to War When Lincoln’s election to the presidency triggered the secession crisis in the winter of 1860–61, most Georgians initially hoped for yet another sectional compromise. The Georgia legislature, however, following a directive from Governor Joseph E. Brown, appropriated $1 million for military expenses and called for the election of delegates to a state convention to discuss secession. The majority of Georgia’s political leaders at this point, including Francis S. Bartow, Henry Benning, Governor Brown, Howell Cobb, Thomas R. R. Cobb, Wilson Lumpkin, Eugenius A. Nisbet, and Robert Toombs, advocated secession. Their efforts focused on exciting white Southerners’ fears of slave insurrection and abolition, which could potentially lead to black equality and intermarriage. Despite the best efforts of such antisecessionists as Alexander Stephens and Benjamin Hill, the die was cast. The secession convention vote on January 19, 1861, took Georgia out of the Union as expected, though by a closer vote than many had anticipated. Infantry regiments 6 Overview: The Civil War in Georgia were authorized, and the convention appointed Bartow, the Cobb brothers , Nisbet, Toombs, Stephens, and four others as delegates to a convention of other seceded states to meet in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4. At Montgomery, the delegates organized the Confederate States of America, and Georgians played an important role in creating the provisional Confederate government. Howell Cobb served as president of the convention, and Thomas R. R. Cobb was the main architect of the Confederate Constitution. Toombs and Stephens were prominent in the proceedings , but to their disappointment the presidency of the new nation fell to Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Still, Stephens won the vice presidency , and Toombs accepted the office of secretary of state. The War Begins After secession, most Georgians hoped to avoid war and peacefully leave the Union, but the firing on Fort Sumter, the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina, made conflict inevitable. Governor Brown’s call for volunteers on April 18 brought an enthusiastic response, and by October 1861 around 25,000 Georgians had enlisted in Confederate service. At first, Georgians experienced the war on far-off battlefields in Virginia and Tennessee. Soon, however, the war came to Georgia by sea. A Union naval force under Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, established a base of operations on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in the fall of 1861, to launch attacks along the south Atlantic coast. Alarmed, President Davis sent General Robert E. Lee to Savannah to organize the defense of Georgia and upper Florida. Lee lacked the resources to do much, however, and before long Union forces began capturing key points along Georgia’s coast. By March 1862 Union troops had seized all of Georgia’s coastal islands, and on April 10, 1862, Union batteries on Tybee Island wrecked Fort Pulaski, leading to the fort’s surrender and the closure of Savannah as a functioning port. By the war’s second year, the Union also targeted Georgia’s railroads. In April 1862 Union spy James J. Andrews led twenty saboteurs in a daring raid. In Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw, in Cobb County) they seized the General locomotive and steamed northward. Western and Atlantic Railroad officials pursued them and, after a nearly ninety-mile chase, caught the Andrews gang near Ringgold before they could significantly damage the rail line. Confederate soldiers captured most of the Overview: The Civil War...