One in nine Americans fought in the war, and one in four of those who fought were wounded or killed, most slowly and painfully by disease. Georgia played a huge role in the Civil War with an estimated one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers for confederacy and several hundred white and three thousand five hundred african americans for the union. Georgia hoped to have a peaceful experience and ended up being one of the most important states in the civil war with almost five hundred and fifty battles being fought within the state(Georgia in the american civil war).
Georgia was home to some very important leaders during the civil war including; Howell Cobb, Joseph Brown, Robert Toombs and many many more(Georgia Encyclopedia). All of these leaders wanted secession and used southerners’ fear of slave abolishment to achieve it. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 states in the lower south moved quickly to call state conventions to consider secession. Georgia successfully seceded on January nineteenth of eighteen sixty-one after the vote was taken at two o’clock and passed by a margin of 208-89. Convention President George Crawford declared it passed and much of georgia celebrated(Civil War Daily). Georgia was the fifth southern state to leave the …show more content…
Georgia's economy and politics were forever changed after the civil war. The major effect of Reconstruction would be sharecropping. Property tax had now fallen on landowners, including the newly emancipated slaves who had purchased land, and during reconstruction tax rates also increased. While most white southerners owned land during the antebellum period the majority became landless sharecroppers by the early nineteen hundreds, land ownership by black farmers had grown to thirteen percent by nineteen hundreds most remained sharecroppers as well(Georgia