Georgia's secession convention, meeting in Milledgeville, voted decisively to leave the Union just weeks after South Carolina's departure sparked a cascade of secessions across the Deep South. The state's secession declaration explicitly cited the preservation of slavery as its central grievance, joining a bloc that would form the Confederate States of America two weeks later.
On January 19, 1861, delegates gathered in Georgia's capital of Milledgeville and voted 208 to 89 to secede from the United States, making Georgia the fifth state to do so following South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama. The vote came amid fevered debate between immediate secessionists and a cooperationist faction that favored delaying withdrawal, but the immediatists carried the day.
Georgia's secession declaration was unusually blunt about its motives, stating plainly that the state's decision rested on "a persistent disregard of our rights and equal dignity in the Union" regarding slavery, and complaining bitterly about Northern efforts to restrict the institution's expansion into new territories. Alexander Stephens, who would soon become the Confederacy's vice president, had argued against immediate secession but ultimately went along with his state's decision.
Georgia's departure was a critical domino in the chain reaction that produced the Confederate States of America, formally established in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4, 1861. Its large population, agricultural output, and rail network made it one of the Confederacy's most vital states, and it would later suffer devastating invasion during Sherman's 1864 March to the Sea.
Key people: Alexander Stephens