Dahlonega, was opened in 1873; the Georgia School of Technology, at Atlanta, in 1888; the Georgia Normal and Industrial College (for women), in Milledgeville, in 1899; the Georgia State Normal School, at Athens, in 1895; the Georgia State Industrial College for Coloured Youth, near Savannah, in 1890; the School of Pharmacy, at Athens, in 1903; and the School of Forestry, and the Georgia State College of Agriculture, at Athens, in 1906. Affiliated with the university, but not receiving state funds, are three preparatory schools, the South Georgia Military and Agricultural College at Thomasville, the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College at Milledgeville, and the West Georgia Agricultural and Mechanical College at Hamilton. Among the institutions generally grouped as denominational are—Baptist: Mercer University, at Macon (Penfield, 1837; Macon, 1871), Shorter College (1877) at Rome, Spelman Seminary (1881) in Atlanta for negro women and girls, and Bessie Tift College, formerly Monroe College (1849) for women, at Forsyth; Methodist Episcopal: Emory College (1836), at Oxford, and Wesleyan Female College (1836) at Macon, both largely endowed by George Ingraham Seney (1837–1893), and the latter one of the earliest colleges for women in the country; Methodist Episcopal Church, South: Young Harris College (1855) at Young Harris, Andrew Female College (1854) at Cuthbert, and Dalton Female College (1872) at Dalton; Presbyterian: Agnes Scott College at Decatur; and African Methodist Episcopal: Morris Brown College (1885) at Atlanta. A famous school for negroes is the non-sectarian Atlanta University (incorporated in 1867, opened in 1869), which has trained many negroes for teaching and other professions. Non-sectarian colleges for women are: Lucy Cobb Institute (1858) at Athens, Cox College (1843) at College Park, near Atlanta, and Brenau College Conservatory (1878) at Gainesville.
Finance.—The assessed value of taxable property in 1910 was about $735,000,000. A general property tax, which furnishes about four-fifths of the public revenue, worked so inequitably that a Board of Equalization was appointed in 1901. By the Constitution the tax rate is limited to $5 on the thousand, and, as the rate of taxation has increased faster than the taxable property, the state has been forced to contract several temporary loans since 1901, none of which has exceeded $200,000, the limit for each year set by the Constitution. On the 1st of January 1910 the bonded debt was $6,944,000, mainly incurred by the extravagance of the Reconstruction administration (see History, below). Each year $100,000 of this debt is paid off, and there are annual appropriations for the payment of interest (about $303,260 in 1910). The state owns the Western & Atlantic railway (137 m. long) from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Atlanta, which has valuable terminal facilities in both cities, and which in 1910 was estimated to be worth $8,400,240 (more than the amount of the bonded debt); this railway the state built in 1841–1850, and in 1890 leased for 29 years, at an annual rental of $420,012, to the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis railway.
Banking in Georgia is in a prosperous condition. The largest class of depositors are the farmers, who more and more look to the banks for credit, instead of to the merchants and cotton speculators. Hence the number of banks in agricultural districts is increasing. The state treasurer is the bank examiner, and to him all banks must make a quarterly statement and submit their books for examination twice a year. The legal rate of interest is 7%, but by contract it may be 8%.
History.—Georgia derives its name from King George II. of Great Britain. It was the last to be established of the English colonies in America. Its formation was due to a desire of the British government to protect South Carolina from invasion by the Spaniards from Florida and by the French from Louisiana, as well as to the desire of James Edward Oglethorpe (q.v.) to found a refuge for the persecuted Protestant sects and the unfortunate but worthy indigent classes of Europe. A charter was granted in 1732 to “the Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia in America,” and parliament gave £10,000 to the enterprise. The first settlement was made at Savannah in 1733 under the personal supervision of Oglethorpe. The early colonists were German Lutherans (Salzburgers), Piedmontese, Scottish Highlanders, Swiss, Portuguese Jews and Englishmen; but the main tide of immigration, from Virginia and the Carolinas, did not set in until 1752. As a bulwark against the Spanish, the colony was successful, but as an economic experiment it was a failure. The trustees desired that there should be grown in the colony wine grapes, hemp, silk and medical plants (barilla, kali, cubeb, caper, madder, &c.) for which England was dependent upon foreign countries; they required the settlers to plant mulberry trees, and forbade the sale of rum, the chief commercial staple of the colonies. They also forbade the introduction of negro slaves. Land was leased by military tenure, and until 1739 grants were made only in male tail and alienations were forbidden. The industries planned for the colony did not thrive, and as sufficient labour could not be obtained, the importation of slaves was permitted under certain conditions in 1749. About the same time the House of Commons directed the trustees to remove the prohibition on the sale of rum. In 1753 the charter of the trustees expired and Georgia became a royal province.
Under the new regime the colony was so prosperous that Sir James Wright (1716–1785), the last of the royal governors, declared Georgia to be “the most flourishing colony on the continent.” The people were led to revolt against the mother country through sympathy with the other colonies rather than through any grievance of their own. The centre of revolutionary ideas was St John’s Parish, settled by New Englanders (chiefly from Dorchester, Massachusetts). The Loyalist sentiment was so strong that only five of the twelve parishes sent representatives to the First Provincial Congress, which met on the 18th of January 1775, and its delegates to the Continental Congress therefore did not claim seats in that assembly. But six months later all the parishes sent representatives to another Provincial Congress which met on the 4th of July 1775. Soon afterward the royal government collapsed and the administration of the colony was assumed by a council of safety.
The war that followed was really a severe civil conflict, the Loyalist and Revolutionary parties being almost equal in numbers. In 1778 the British seized Savannah, which they held until 1782, meanwhile reviving the British civil administration, and in 1779 they captured Augusta and Sunbury; but after 1780 the Revolutionary forces were generally successful. Civil affairs also fell into confusion. In 1777 a state constitution was adopted, but two factions soon appeared in the government, led by the governor and the executive council respectively, and harmony was not secured until 1781.
Georgia’s policy in the formation of the United States government was strongly national. In the constitutional convention of 1787 its delegates almost invariably gave their support to measures designed to strengthen the central government. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify (January 2, 1788), and one of the three that ratified unanimously, the Federal Constitution. But a series of conflicts between the Federal government and the state government caused a decline of this national sentiment and the growth of States Rights theories.
First of these was the friction involved in the case, before the Supreme Court of the United States, of Chisolm v. Georgia, by which the plaintiff, one Alexander Chisolm, a citizen of South Carolina, secured judgment in 1793 against the state of Georgia (see 2 Dallas Reports 419). In protest, the Georgia House of Representatives, holding that the United States Supreme Court had no constitutional power to try suits against a sovereign state, resolved that any Federal marshal who should attempt to execute the court’s decision would be “guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, without benefit of clergy, by being hanged.” No effort was made to execute the decision, and in 1798 the Eleventh Amendment to the Federal Constitution was adopted, taking from Federal courts all jurisdiction over any suit brought “against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.”
The position of Congress and of the Supreme Court with reference to Georgia’s policy in the Yazoo Frauds also aroused distrust of the Federal government. In 1795 the legislature granted for $500,000 the territory extending from the Alabama and Coosa rivers to the Mississippi river and between 35° and 31° N. lat. (almost all of the present state of Mississippi and more than half of the present state of Alabama) to four land companies, but in the following year a new legislature rescinded the contracts
