Georgia during Reconstruction At the end of the American Civil War , the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic . Wartime damage , the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery , and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production . The state ' s chief cash 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 . The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines . White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop , often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned . The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war . Bartow County was representative of the postwar difficulties . Property destruction and the deaths of a third of the soldiers caused financial and social crises ; recovery was delayed by repeated crop failures . The Freedmen ' s Bureau agents were unable to give blacks the help they needed . Wartime Reconstruction or " Forty Acres and a Mule " . At the beginning of Reconstruction , Georgia had over 460 , 000 Freedmen . In January 1865 , in Savannah , William T . Sherman issued Special Field Orders , No . 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate ' abandoned ' plantation lands in the Sea Islands , whose owners had fled with the advance of his army , and redistribute them to former slaves . Redistributing 400 , 000 acres ( 1 , 600 km² ) in coastal Georgia and South Carolina 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 . Shortly after Sherman issued his order , Congressional leaders convinced President Lincoln 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 plots of land to freedmen and white Southern Unionists . Tunis Campbell , 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 , President Andrew Johnson 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 appointed as provisional governor his friend and fellow Unionist , James Johnson , a Columbus lawyer who sat out the war . Delegates to a constitutional convention , meeting in Milledgeville in October , abolished slavery , repealed the Ordinance of Secession , and repudiated the Confederacy debt . The General Assembly , while alone among ex - Confederate states in refraining from enacting a harsh Black Code , 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 Charles J . Jenkins - initially opposed secession . The new state legislator created a political firestorm in Washington by electing to the Senate Alexander Stephens and Herschel Johnson , 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 ' 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 and Florida , became part of the Third Military District , under the command of General John Pope . Radical Republicans also passed an ironclad oath which prevented ex - Confederates from voting or holding office , replacing them with a coalition of Freedmen , Carpetbaggers , and Scalawags , mostly former Whigs who had opposed secession . As directed by Congress , General John Pope 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 , 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 , 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 . Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest visited Atlanta several times in early 1868 to help set up the organization . In Georgia , the Klan was led by John Brown Gordon , a charismatic General in Lee ' s Army of Northern Virginia . 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 native Rufus Bullock , was inaugurated . The states Democrats - including former Confederate leaders Robert Toombs and Howell Cobb - 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 , 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 for president , declared that the state ' s 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 , 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 in the Presidential election of 1868 . The expelled black legislators , led by Tunis Campbell and Henry McNeill Turner , lobbied for federal intervention in Washington . 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 . Akerman . During the tenure of Amos T . Akerman ( 1821 – 1880 ) as Attorney General of the United States from 1870 to 1871 , thousands of indictments were brought against Klansmen ] ] in an effort to enforce the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 . [ [ File : Amos T Akerman Edited Brady Original Public Domain . JPG | thumb | 150px | right | As U . S . Attorney General [ [ Amos T . Akerman set up a justice system that vigorously prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan . ] ] Akerman , though born in the North , moved to Georgia after college and owned slaves ; he fought for the Confederacy and became a Scalawag 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 . Akerman was unafraid of the Klan and committed to protecting the lives and civil rights of Blacks . To bolster Akerman ' 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 ] ] , 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 ' administration of [ [ Rufus Bullock ] ] , accusing two of his friends , Foster Blodgett , superintendent of the state ' s [ [ Western and Atlantic Railroad ] ] , 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 to the United States Constitution | Fifteenth Amendment ] ] 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 ] ] fled the state in order to avoid impeachment . With the voting restrictions against former Confederates removed , Democrat and ex - Confederate Colonel [ [ James Milton Smith ] ] was elected to complete Bullock ' s term . By January 1872 Georgia was fully under the control of the [ [ Redeemers ] ] , 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 . Notes . Georgia was re - admitted to the Union twice Further reading . Primary sources . [ [ Category : History of Georgia ( U . S . state ) ] ] [ [ Category : Reconstruction Era ] ]