Savannah History

Oglethorpe joined 114 colonists on the two month voyage from Gravesend, England to Charleston, South Carolina aboard a two ton vessel called the Anne. Once they landed in Charleston, Olgelthorpe and his group of 35 families headed south, with Oglethorpe scouting out a few days ahead of the rest of the colonists. On February 12, 1733 (what is now known as Georgia Day) the colonists arrived at the site chosen by Oglethorpe, Yamacraw Bluff, a site overlooking the Savannah River. This site became the first city in the new colony of Georgia, named after King George.






City Planning

Oglethorpe's basic city organizational unit was a ward - each with a square in the center. Each square has two lots to the west and two lots to the east, called trust lots, reserved for public buildings, churches, schools and the community in general. To the north and south of each square are two tithing blocks (a total of 4) consisting of 10 60X90 lots. More about historic Savannah and its squares can be found by clicking here.

Immediately upon arrival, Colonel William Bull of South Carolina and Oglethorpe laid out the town as the colonists began clearing the bluff of pine trees. Planting of a small bit of acreage began about the same time as a start toward development of raw silk, which was to be the chief revenue producer of the colony.

Oglethorpe and his trustees had a few rules for this new colony: no slavery, no lawyers, no Catholics, and no distilled liquors. Eventually all the original rules were removed.

Within five months of landing, another boatload of settlers arrived. These settlers were Portugese Jews who established the third Jewish congregation in America, and the first in Georgia.

The Crown Takes Over
Oglethorpe remained intimately involved with his colony for the first ten years during which time the population grew to 2000. Oglethorpe and a small contingent of soldiers defeated the Spanish in the Battle of the Bloody Marsh, which resulted in a peace treaty between Spain and England.

General Oglethorpe left Georgia for the last time in July 1743 and slowly became less involved in its operations. The colony encountered the normal hardships associated with a new settlement in a wilderness, and the population began to dwindle. The trusteeship experienced financial hardships due to a lack of revenue from the colony, and in 1752 the charter was relinquished to the crown.

Georgia was almost immediately upgraded to a province and provided with a royal governor and assembly. The first act of new assembly was to allow slavery. James Wright, who became the third governor of Georgia in 1760, rejuvenated the colony and rice became the major export of the region. By 1766, Georgia had over 17,000 residents - 10,000 were white.

King Cotton
Savannah history is intertwined with the history of cotton in the United States. The antebellum period in Georgia was also known as the period where cotton was king (based upon a statement made by Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina) - "You dare not make war upon cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king!"

One of the revenue generators for the south was long-staple cotton, grown mostly in Georgia and South Carolina. But the cotton depleted the soil, which required a great deal of labor to replenish. And picking out lint and cotton seeds manually was also a very laborious process. Cotton just couldn't compete with rice and indigo in terms of revenue.

It was this situation that Eli Whitney found when he came to work at Mulburry Grove for the widow of General Nathanael Green. Being a mechanical prodigy, Whitney designed and developed the cotton gin in the spring of 1793. The cotton gin allowed the mechanical removal of the seeds in the heavily seeded short-staple cotton. With the creation of the cotton gin and the prospect of higher profits (especially from Britain), plantation owners all over Georgia substituted cotton for their other crops. By the onset of the Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60% of all American exports, bringing a great deal of wealth to cotton farmers.

What cotton also brought was a greater demand for slaves. Preparation of the fields and picking the cotton was still labor intensive, so more manual laborers were needed. Estimates are that almost 2 million slaves in the United States were used to prepare the fields and pick the cotton, an influx of almost 1 million slaves before the advent of the cotton gin.

Civil War
Savannah history is rooted in Civil War history. As slavery increased in the south, opposition to the practice grew in the north. Eventually, disputes over slavery and states' rights drove such a wedge between the north and south, that a civil war was inevitable. Three months before the war officially started in Charleston, militias from Savannah seized Fort Pulaski, a fort sitting at the mouth of the Savannah River between Savannah and Tybee Island. Fort Pulaski was the post that a young West Pointer, Robert E. Lee, was assigned to after his graduation, and now it was in the hands of the southern militia. But, not for long. Within 15 months, Federal troops, took back the fort within 30 hours with cannon placed on Tybee Island. Taking back Fort Pulaski and it's strategic position at the mouth of the Savannah River allowed the Federal army to blockade Savannah's port and the city fell on hard times.

Southerners were certain the north and south would never go to war because the north was very dependent upon southern cotton. Cotton was king. And even if civil war broke out, the south was certain Britain, the south's main buyer of cotton, would intervene on behalf of the south. War broke out, but Britain stayed neutral.

Other than sending many citizens to participate in the war, Savannah was pretty isolated from the action. It was not until General Grant ordered General William T. Sherman and march across the southern states and destroy anything that could be used to take up arms against the Federal army, did Savannah again appear on anyone's map. When Sherman arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864, at the end of his March to the Sea, he took the city with little effort. He sent President Abraham Lincoln a telegram that said, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."

Savannah came out of the war physically unharmed but financially troubled. The blockade had left the city virtually bankrupt. But, within a year of the end of the war (which some southerners refer to as the "War of Northern Aggression") Savannah was seeing a resurgence in cotton production and trade.