History of Georgia (U.S. State) - Postbellum Economic Growth

Postbellum Economic Growth

Under the Reconstruction government, the former state capital of Milledgeville was replaced by the inland rail terminus of Atlanta. Construction began on a new capitol building, which was completed by 1889. The population of Atlanta increased rapidly.

Post-Reconstruction Georgia was dominated by the 'Bourbon Triumvirate' of Joseph E. Brown, Gen. John B. Gordon and Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt. Between 1872 and 1890, either Brown or Gordon held one of Georgia's Senate seats, Colquitt held the other, and, in the major part of that period, either Colquitt or Gordon occupied the Governor's office. Democrats effectively monopolized state politics. Colquitt represented the old planter class; Brown, head of Western & Atlantic Railroad and one of the states first millionaires, represented the New South businessmen. Gordon was neither a planter nor a successful businessman, but the former Confederate General proved a most skilled politician.

Brown, a prestigious former Confederate general, was the leader of the 1st Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. He was the first former Confederate to serve in the U.S. Senate. He helped negotiate the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and led to the end of federal enforcement of laws protecting blacks. A native of northwest Georgia, his popularity impeded the growth of the 'mountain Republicanism,' which was prevalent elsewhere in Appalachian areas where slavery had been minor and resentment against the planter class widespread.

During the Gilded Age, Georgia slowly recovered from the devastation of the Civil War. One of the most enduring products came about in reaction to the age's excesses. In 1885, when Atlanta and Fulton County enacted prohibition legislation, a local pharmacist, John Pemberton invented a new drink. Two years later, after he sold the drink to Asa Candler who promoted it, Coca-Cola became the state's most famous product.

Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, emerged as the leading spokesman of the 'New South'. He promoted sectional reconciliation and the region's place in a rapidly industrializing nation. The International Cotton Exposition of 1881 and the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 were staged to promote Georgia and the South as textile centers. They attracted mills from New England to build a new economic base in the post-war South by diversifying the region’s agrarian economies. Attracted by low labor costs and the proximity to raw materials, new textile businesses transformed Columbus and Atlanta, as well as Graniteville, on the Georgia-South Carolina border, into textile manufacturing centers.

Due to Georgia's relatively untapped virgin forests, particularly in the thinly populated pine savanna of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, logging became a major industry. It supported other new industries, most notably paper mills and turpentine distilling, which, by 1900, made Georgia the leading producer of naval stores. Also important were coal, granite and kaolin mining, the latter used in the manufacture of paper, bricks and ceramic piping.

In the volatile 1880s and 1890s, the number of lynchings of blacks grew steadily, reaching its height in 1899, when 27 Georgians were killed by lynch mobs. From 1890 to 1900, Georgia averaged more than one mob killing per month. More than 95% of the victims of the 450 lynchings documented between 1882 and 1930 were black. This period corresponded to Georgia's disfranchisement of blacks and many poor whites through changes to its constitution and addition of such requirements as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency requirements. Political violence was used against blacks to reduce voting until they were disfranchised, a situation that prevailed for more than 60 years into the 20th century.

The Cotton States and International Exposition was the venue of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise. He urged blacks to focus their efforts, not on demands for social equality, but to improve their own conditions by becoming proficient in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic service. He proposed building a broad base within existing conditions. He urged whites to take responsibility to improve social and economic relations between the races.

Black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who supported classical academic standards for education, disagreed with Washington and said he was acquiescing to oppression. Du Bois, one of the most highly educated black men in America, in 1897 joined the faculty of Atlanta University and taught there for several years.