To Georgians in the Antebellum period, education was not very important. Only the sons of some wealthy plantation owners received professional schooling. By 1850, a fifth of Georgia’s white population were illiterate and half of the children in GA received no education at all because they were black. In the late 1850s, the government set aside $100,000 for public schools, but it was shortly forgotten about because of the Civil War. Also during the 1850s, some specialized schools were founded in GA. For example, the GA Academy for the Blind was founded in Macon, and GA’s first law school was founded in Athens in 1859.
