Georgia Politics

Georgia Politics

Question One: What is the fall line?

In Georgia, the fall line is the boundary between the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont. It is called so as the first rapids or falls in rivers encountered while coming to the inland from the ocean are normally found at this point. As the streams die down the Piedmont and onto the Coastal Plain, it marks the dividing line one to the north and the other to the south.

Question 2: How did the fall line impact Georgia’s development?

The Fall line was crucial to the historical development of Georgia. Coastal Plain rivers were enormous and slow-moving, making navigation by boats possible. However, reaching the Fall line, the boats could not go any further, and as such, this led to the growth of trading posts along the Fall line. Here materials that came from the Coastal Plain rivers could be traded with those from the Piedmont area. This resulted in the rise of four of Georgia’s critical cities, including Augusta, Milledgeville, Macon, and Columbus.

Question 3: How is the land in the Black Belt different from areas to the north or south?

Since the 1820s, the Black Belt has always been identified as a strip of rich dark, cotton-growing region better known for drawing immigrants from the Carolinas and Georgia. It emerged as the core of a rapidly expanding plantation region due to its unusually fertile soil that comes from the weathering of the Selma Chalk of an ancient ocean floor.

Question 4: How did the Black Belt impact Georgia’s development?

The growth of the plantation system in the Black Belt spread from South Carolina through Mississippi, Alabama, and beyond into the southwestern and central Georgia. The development led to Georgia’s economic growth as an agricultural center due to plantation cultivation.

Question 5: How does the Black Belt still impact Georgia politics today?

The Black Belt is dominated by blacks, a scenario that was brought about by the region’s ancient practice of slavery in the cotton plantations. The black population in the Black Belt becomes very vital in Georgia’s politics, a state where 30% of registered voters are black.

Question 6: Why was Atlanta chosen as the new capital of Georgia after the Civil War ended?

Atlanta was designated as the capital of Georgia after the Civil War in light of its population growth and better accessibility by rail.

Question 7: The first Europeans to visit the future state of Georgia were from?

The first Europeans to set foot in Georgia were from Spain.

Question 8: How did Oglethorpe’s vision for Georgia differ from other English colonies?

Although the Imperial officials were craving to create a buffer colony in Georgia, the Trustees of the territory in the leadership of James Oglethorpe visioned it as a humanitarian refuge for English debtors and criminals without slaves, rum, or large landed estates.

Question 9: Slavery was banned during Georgia’s Trustee Era

True, slavery was banned during Georgia’s Trustee Era, which was led by James Oglethorpe.

Question 11: When slavery was legalized, a large number of planters came to Georgia from?

South Carolina was the place where a large number of planters came from and into Georgia after slavery was legalized.

Question 12: When the American Revolution broke out, Georgians were less angry at the British government in Georgia than in other colonies. Why?

Georgia had prospered under the royal rule, and many Georgians felt that they needed the protection of British troops against a possible Indian attack. As such, many Georgians hesitated to join the Revolutionary movement that emerged in the other American colonies in the early 1770s that resulted in the American Revolutionary War.

Question 13: The Yazoo Land Sale became a scandal because of:

The bribery of state legislators made the Yazoo Land Sale translate into a scandal of national attention.

Question 14: James Jackson was one of the biggest names in early Georgia politics. Why?

James Jackson garnered a reputation in early Georgia politics as being the State’s governor, whereby his most critical contributions to the state included overturning the 1795 Yazoo land fraud and also in building Georgia’s first true political party.

Question 17: Under the Yazoo Compact of 1802 the national government promised to eliminate Native America control of land inside the boundaries of Georgia.

True

Question 18: At the Cherokee National Meeting why did the Treaty Party argue that the Cherokee should agree to the treaty?

Some Cherokees had felt that it was futile to fight any longer. Since moving was their only viable option, they believed that a new treaty accepting removal would at least compensate them for their land before they could lose everything.

Question 21: How did Eli Whitney’s cotton gin transform Georgia’s economy?

The economic impact of Whitney’s gin was vast, as, after its invention, the yield of raw cotton almost doubled each decade after that. It helped to facilitate westward expansion into potential cotton-producing areas, and by mid-nineteenth-century America was supplying three-quarters of the world’s cotton Georgia taking a significant lead.

Question34: What was the goal of Congressional Reconstruction?

The aim of congressional Reconstruction was to bring the South back into the Union while protecting the rights and safety of the newly freed slaves.

Question 35: Why did Reconstruction fail to attain it’s goal in Georgia?

Charles Jenkings, the first elected governor for Georgia, refused to authorize state funding for the racially integrated state constitutional convention leading to the dissolution of his government by General George Meade replacing him with a military governor. The coup galvanized white resistance to the reconstruction efforts and fuelled the growth of the Ku Klux Klan.

Question 36: Who had power in the “Bourbon” era of Georgia Politics?

During the Bourbon Era in Georgia, power was held by the reactionary wing of the Democratic Party, who were referred to as Bourbon Democrats.

Question 37: What was the purpose of lynchings in Georgia?

The purpose of lynchings in Georgia was to enforce white supremacy and intimidate blacks by racial terrorism.

Question 38: Lynching eventually declined because of the:

The intervention by the national government led to the decline of the lynching of black Americans in the United States.

Question 39: The Great Migration was:

The movement of at least 1/3 of the USA’s black population out of the south.