Development of Georgia

Development of Georgia Economic Growth Gears Up!

Standard: SS8H5 • The student will explain significant factors that affected the development of Georgia as part of the growth of the United States between 1789 and 1840. • C. Explain how technological developments, including the cotton gin and railroads, had an impact on Georgia’s growth.

COTTON GIN • http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/cottonGin.html

Before Cotton was KING! • Georgia’s most important crop: TOBACCO • Destroying the soil • Big Question: How to make growing cotton profitable? • At this time, cotton had to be “deseeded” by hand. • A worker might have been able to separate six or seven pounds of cotton seed a day by hand.

How cotton became KING! • 1793 Eli Whitney visited the home of Mrs. Catherine Greene Miller at Mulberry Grove Plantation near Savannah. • Not long after, a visitor to the Miller home wished aloud for a machine to separate cotton fiber from its seed. • Mrs. Miller asked Whitney if he could make a machine that would speed up the work done so slowly by hand. • Before long, Whitney had a working cotton engine, later shortened to just “GIN.”

After Cotton became KING! • Cotton was “KING” of the crops in Georgia! • The cotton gin separated the seeds from the cotton plant twice as fast as a person could do it by hand. • Workers were able to separate about 50 pounds a day. • The South became even more dependent on slavery because there was a great need for cotton in the South. • If the South did not have slavery, it would not have been able to grow, produce, and profit from cotton as much as it did. • The invention of the cotton gin changed Georgia forever!

Here comes the Railroads! • Before railroads, people traveled by: • Horses, boats or stagecoaches • Georgia’s increase in cotton production led to a better way to deliver cotton to the market in Savannah. • Since people moved inland from the rivers, a new system was needed: RAILROADS!

Here comes the Railroads! • Most of the track in Georgia belonged to the Western and Atlantic Railroad. • Ran from Chattanooga, TN and ended at a town called TERMINUS • Terminus: end of the line

Railroads! • In 1834, workers began to build the Georgia Railroad, from Athens to Augusta • The name Terminus was changed to: • 1843  Marthasville (after former governor Lumpkin’s daughter) • 1845 Atlanta (feminization of the name Atlantic) • Within 15 years, Atlanta was the center of railroad traffic in the South. • ATLANTA: first major American city to be built on a location without a navigable river

Development of Georgia