Civil War

The threat of secession hung heavy over the land eight days after Abraham Lincoln’s election. Alexander Stephens, who had known Lincoln from his days in Congress, addressed the Georgia General Assembly on this day in 1860. He told the legislature secession was premature. Alexander Hamilton Stephens, born in 1812 near Crawfordville, had been a dominant […]

Dred Scott v Sanford was one of the most controversial cases in history, with a Georgian sitting on the Supreme Court that decided it. Dred Scott was a Missouri slave who sued for freedom after his master took him to the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger […]

Margaret Mitchell portrayed him as a corrupt carpetbagger, whose great failing was to be a Republican who supported African-American equality. Rufus Bullock was born in 1834 in New York. He moved to Augusta and did business with the Confederates after the Civil War began, though he opposed secession. He was a lieutenant colonel in the […]

He was the second-highest ranking Georgian in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and fought in every major battle, but was court-martialed for neglect of duty. Lafayette McLaws was born in Augusta in 1821. a West Point graduate, he served in the Mexican War, but resigned his commission to fight for the Confederacy. McLaws rose quickly […]

A U.S. Army fort in Columbus is named for a man who waged war against the U.S. Army. Henry Benning, born in Columbia County, was one of Georgia’s most outspoken disunionists. During the sectional crisis of the 1850s, Benning defended slavery. He ran for Congress on a Southern rights platform and lost. But he found […]