Wartime Reconstruction or Forty Acres and a Mule

At the beginning of Reconstruction, Georgia had over 460,000 Freedmen. In January 1865, in Savannah

Savannah, Georgia

Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...

, William T. Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate 'abandoned' plantation lands in the Sea Islands

Sea Islands

The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the United States. They number over 100, and are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of the U.S...

, whose owners had fled with the advance of his army, and redistribute them to former slaves. Redistributing 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in costal Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

 and South Carolina

South Carolina

South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...

 to 40,000 freed slaves in forty-acre plots, this order was intended to provide for the thousands of escaped slaves who had been following his army during his March to the Sea

Sherman's March to the Sea

Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...

. Shortly after Sherman issued his order, Congressional leaders convinced President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865. The Freedmen's Bureau, as it came to be called, was authorized to give legal title for 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) plots of land to freedmen and white Southern Unionists. Tunis Campbell

Tunis Campbell

Tunis Campbell was a prominent African American politician of the 19th century, and a major figure in Reconstruction Georgia....

, a free Northern black missionary, was appointed to supervise land claims and resettlement in Georgia. Over the objections of Freedmen's Bureau chief General Oliver O. Howard

Oliver O. Howard

Oliver Otis Howard was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War...

, President Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...

 revoked Sherman's directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, returning these lands to the planters who had previously owned them.

Presidential Reconstruction

On Georgia's farms and plantations, wartime destruction, the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery, and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The states chief money crop, cotton, fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865, while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. After the war, new railroad lines and commercial fertilizers increased cotton production in Georgia's upcountry, but the coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.

Many emancipated slaves flocked to towns, where they encountered overcrowding and shortages of food, large numbers dying of epidemic diseases. The Freedmens Bureau returned much black labor to the field, mediating a contract-labor system between white landowners and their black workers, usually their former slaves. Taking advantage of educational opportunities available for the first time, within a year, at least 8,000 former slaves were attending schools in Georgia, established with northern philanthropy.

In mid-June 1865, Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...

 appointed as provisional governor his friend and fellow Unionist, James Johnson

James Johnson

-Artists, authors, and musicians:*James B. Johnson , author of science fiction novels*James Johnson , English artist*James Johnson , late 18th-century Scottish musicologist*James P...

, a Columbus

Columbus, Georgia

Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Muscogee County, Georgia, United States, with which it is consolidated. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 189,885. It is the principal city of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, which, in 2009, had an estimated population of 292,795...

 lawyer who sat out the war. Delegates to a constitutional convention, meeting in Milledgeville

Milledgeville, Georgia

Milledgeville is a city in and the county seat of Baldwin County in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is northeast of Macon, located just before Eatonton on the way to Athens along U.S. Highway 441, and it is located on the Oconee River. The relatively rapid current of the Oconee here made this an...

 in October, abolished slavery, repealed the Ordinance of Secession, and repudiated the Confederacy

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

 debt. The General Assembly, while alone among ex-Confederate states in refraining from enacting a harsh Black Code

Black Codes in the USA

The Black Codes were laws put in place in the United States after the Civil War with the effect of limiting the basic human rights and civil liberties of blacks. Even though the U.S...

, assumed newly freed slaves would enjoy only the limited freedom of the prewar period's 'free persons of color,' and enacted a constitutional amendment outlawing interracial marriage. On November 15, 1865, Georgia elected a new governor, congressmen, and state legislators. Voters repudiated most Unionist candidates, electing to office many ex-Confederates, although several of these-including the new governor, former Whig

Whig Party (United States)

The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...

 Charles J. Jenkins

Charles J. Jenkins

Charles Jones Jenkins was a politician from Georgia, U.S..-Biography:Jenkins was born in South Carolina. His family moved to Jefferson County, Georgia, and Jenkins attended the University of Georgia in Athens at a young age; his exact dates of attendance are not known...

-initially opposed secession. The new state legislator created a political firestorm in Washington by electing to the Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 Alexander Stephens

Alexander Stephens

Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician from Georgia. He was Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He also served as a U.S...

 and Herschel Johnson

Herschel Vespasian Johnson

Herschel Vespasian Johnson was an American politician. He was the 41st Governor of Georgia from 1853 to 1857 and the vice-presidential nominee of the Douglas wing of the Democratic Party in the 1860 US presidential election....

, respectively, Vice-President and Senator of the Confederacy. Neither Stephens, Johnson nor any of Georgia's House delegation were allowed to take their seats.

Congressional Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...

's decision in August 1866 to restore the former Confederate states to the Union was criticized by the Radical Republicans in Congress, who, in March 1867, passed the First Reconstruction Act, placing the South under military occupation. Georgia, along with Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

 and Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, became part of the Third Military District

Third Military District

The Third Military District existed in the American South during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War. It comprises Georgia, Florida and Alabama and was headquartered in Atlanta....

, under the command of General John Pope

John Pope (military officer)

John Pope was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He had a brief but successful career in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in the East.Pope was a graduate of the United States Military Academy in...

. Radical Republicans also passed an ironclad oath

Ironclad oath

The Ironclad Oath was a key factor in the removing of ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction of the United States in the 1860s...

 which prevented ex-Confederates from voting or holding office, replacing them with a coalition of Freedmen, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags, mostly former Whigs

Whig Party (United States)

The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...

 who had opposed secession.

As directed by Congress, General John Pope

John Pope (military officer)

John Pope was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He had a brief but successful career in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in the East.Pope was a graduate of the United States Military Academy in...

 registered Georgia's eligible white and black voters, 95,214 and 93,457 respectively. From October 29 through November 2, 1867, elections were held for delegates to a new constitutional convention, held in Atlanta rather than the state capital of Milledgeville

Milledgeville, Georgia

Milledgeville is a city in and the county seat of Baldwin County in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is northeast of Macon, located just before Eatonton on the way to Athens along U.S. Highway 441, and it is located on the Oconee River. The relatively rapid current of the Oconee here made this an...

, to prevent the interference of the ex-Confederates. In January 1868, after Georgia's first elected governor after the end of the war, Charles Jenkins

Charles J. Jenkins

Charles Jones Jenkins was a politician from Georgia, U.S..-Biography:Jenkins was born in South Carolina. His family moved to Jefferson County, Georgia, and Jenkins attended the University of Georgia in Athens at a young age; his exact dates of attendance are not known...

, refused to authorize state funds for the racially integrated state constitutional convention, his government was dissolved by Pope's successor General George Meade and replaced by a military governor. This coup galvanized white resistance to the Reconstruction, fueling the growth of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

. Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar years...

 visited Atlanta several times in early 1868 to help set up the organization. In Georgia, the Klan was led by John Brown Gordon

John Brown Gordon

John Brown Gordon was one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted Confederate generals during the American Civil War. After the war, he was a strong opponent of Reconstruction and is thought by some to have been the titular leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia during the late 1860s. A member of the...

, a charismatic General in Lee

Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....

's Army of Northern Virginia

Army of Northern Virginia

The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, as well as the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most often arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac...

. Freedmen's Bureau agents reported 336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill against freedmen across the state from January 1 through November 15 of 1868.

In July 1870, Georgia was readmitted to the Union, the newly elected General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and a Republican governor, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 native Rufus Bullock

Rufus Bullock

Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician.-Biography:He served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After various allegations of scandal, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship...

, was inaugurated. The states Democrats-including former Confederate leaders Robert Toombs

Robert Toombs

Robert Augustus Toombs was an American political leader, United States Senator from Georgia, 1st Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a Confederate general in the Civil War.-Early life:...

 and Howell Cobb

Howell Cobb

Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A Southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851...

-denounced the policies of the Reconstruction in a mass-rally in Atlanta described as the largest in the states history. The principle target of the rally, Joseph E. Brown

Joseph E. Brown

Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...

, Georgia's Governor under the Confederacy, who became a Republican and a delegate to the Chicago convention that had nominated Union general Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...

 for president, declared that the states constitution did not allow blacks to hold office. In September, white Republicans joined with the Democrats in expelling the three black senators and twenty-five black representatives in the lower house from the General Assembly (see E.C. Woolley, The Reconstruction of Georgia p. 94). A week later in the southwest Georgia town of Camilla

Camilla, Georgia

As of the census of 2000, there were 5,669 people, 1,994 households, and 1,405 families residing in the city. The population density was 929.4 people per square mile . There were 2,128 housing units at an average density of 348.9 per square mile...

, white residents attacked a black Republican rally, killing twelve people.

These developments led to calls for Georgia's return to military rule, which increased after Georgia was one of only two ex-Confederate states to vote against Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...

 in the Presidential election of 1868. The expelled black legislators, led by Tunis Campbell

Tunis Campbell

Tunis Campbell was a prominent African American politician of the 19th century, and a major figure in Reconstruction Georgia....

 and Henry McNeill Turner, lobbied for federal intervention in Washington

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. In March 1869 Governor Bullock, hoping to prolong Reconstruction, "engineered" the defeat of the Fifteenth Amendment. The same month the U.S. Congress once again barred Georgia's representatives from their seats, causing military rule to resume in December 1869. In January 1870, Gen. Alfred H. Terry, the final commanding general of the Third District, purged the General Assembly's ex-Confederates, replaced them with the Republican runners-up, and reinstated the expelled black legislators, creating a large Republican majority in the legislature.

Amos T. Ackerman

During the tenure of Amos T. Akerman

Amos T. Akerman

Amos Tappan Akerman served as United States Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant from 1870 to 1871. Akerman was born on February 23, 1821 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as the ninth of Benjamin Akerman’s twelve children...

 (1821–1880) as Attorney General of the United States from 1870 to 1871, thousands of indictments were brought against Klansmen

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 in an effort to enforce the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871. Akerman, though born in the North, moved to Georgia after college and owned slaves; he fought for the Confederacy and became a Scalawag

Scalawag

In United States history, scalawag was a derogatory nickname for southern whites who supported Reconstruction following the Civil War.-History:...

 during Reconstruction, speaking out for civil rights for blacks. As U.S. Attorney General under President Grant, he became the first ex-Confederate to reach the cabinet. Ackerman was unafraid of the Klan and committed to protecting the lives and civil rights of Blacks. To bolster Ackerman's investigation, President Grant sent in Secret Service agents from the Justice Department to infiltrate the Klan to gather evidence for prosecution. The investigations revealed that many whites actively participated in Klan activities. With this evidence, Grant issued a Presidential proclamation to disarm and remove the Klan's notorious white robe and hood disguises. When the Klan ignored the proclamation, Grant was able to send in Federal troops in nine South Carolina counties to put down the violent activities of the Klan. Grant teamed Akerman up with another reformer in 1870, a native Kentuckian, the first Solicitor General Benjamin Bristow

Benjamin Bristow

Benjamin Helm Bristow was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who served as the first Solicitor General of the United States and as a U.S. Treasury Secretary. Fighting for the Union, Bristow served in the army during the American Civil War and was promoted to Colonel...

, and the duo went on to prosecute thousands of Klan members and brought a brief quiet period of two years in the turbulent Reconstruction era.

End of Reconstruction

Georgia Democrats despised the 'Carpetbagger

Carpetbagger

Carpetbaggers was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877....

' administration of Rufus Bullock

Rufus Bullock

Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician.-Biography:He served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After various allegations of scandal, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship...

, accusing two of his friends, Foster Blodgett, superintendent of the state's Western and Atlantic Railroad

Western and Atlantic Railroad

The Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia' is a historic railroad that operated in the southeastern United States from Atlanta, Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee....

, and Hannibal I. Kimball, owner of the Atlanta opera house where the state legislature met, of embezzling state funds. His efforts to prolong military rule caused considerable divisions in the states party, while black politicians complained that they did not receive an adequate share of patronage. In February 1870 the newly constituted legislature ratified the Fifteenth Amendment

Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...

 and chose new Senators to send to Washington. On July 15, Georgia became the last former Confederate state readmitted into the Union. The Democrats subsequently won commanding majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. Governor Rufus Bullock

Rufus Bullock

Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician.-Biography:He served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After various allegations of scandal, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship...

 fled the state in order to avoid impeachment. With the voting restrictions against former Confederates removed, Democrat and ex-Confederate Colonel James Milton Smith

James Milton Smith

James Milton Smith was a Confederate infantry colonel in the American Civil War, as well as a post-war Governor of Georgia. He was noted as an ardent opponent of Radical Reconstruction.-Biography:...

 was elected to complete Bullock's term. By January 1872 Georgia was fully under the control of the Redeemers

Redeemers

In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...

, the state's resurgent white conservative Democrats.

The so-called Redeemers used terrorism to strengthen their rule. The expelled African American legislators were particular targets for their violence. African American legislator Abram Colby was pulled out of his home by a mob and given 100 lashes with a whip. His colleague Abram Turner was murdered. Other African American lawmakers were threatened and attacked.