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| Sidewalk on East Bay St. |
In February of 1733, James Oglethorpe was a 37 year old member of Parliament and former solider. He was also about to become the founder of both the city of Savannah and the state of Georgia.
The project was both commercial and humanitarian. Oglethorpe and a group of reformers had become interested in the plight of England's poor, especially debtors. The solution of the time, imprisonment, was harsh and unsatisfactory. To help, Oglethorpe convinced George II to charter a colony to a group of trustees. Debtors were to be given free transportation and lands to farm in the new colony, named Georgia. The payoff to the crown was to come in the form of products produced in the colony and the buffer that Georgia would establish against the Spanish in Florida.
Oglethorpe established Savannah on a 40 ft bluff overlooking the river of the same name. He stayed with the colony for 10 years and established it on a firm footing.
In 1752 the colony's charter reverted to the crown and laws were eventually changed to allow slavery. That allowed for the growing of a rice crop, which contributed to Savannah's prosperity.
Savannah initially supported the Revolution, but in December of 1778, the British showed up and held the city for the rest of the war. That's despite an unsuccessful siege Patriots mounted in 1779.
In 1793 an important event took place at Mulberry Grove, a Savannah plantation. Eli Whitney, a teacher tutoring the family's children, invented the cotton gin. The machine, which separated cotton fibers from the seeds, turned cotton into a profitable crop. In the next century, cotton led the way to Savannah's rise.
Antebellum Savannah was a prosperous commercial center exporting cotton, rice, tobacco and naval stores. Residents even financed the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic, the S.S. Savannah.
As with most Southern cities, the Civil War is a dividing line in the history of Savannah. The city's actual role in the conflict was rather small. In the spring of 1862, Federal guns on Tybee Island forced the surrender of Fort Pulaski, effectively closing the city. That didn't prevent Savannah from being the subject of the most famous telegram of the war. On Christmas Eve, 1864, President Lincoln received a telegram from General Sherman saying "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."
Although broke at the end of the war, Savannah was fortunate not to have suffered destruction. The local cotton economy rebounded rapidly and the city experienced several decades of growth.
The 20th century saw American cities moving to the suburbs. Savannah was no exception as it abandoned the grid layout and expanded to the south. Grand old inner city houses became unfashionable and expensive to maintain. Many were broken up into apartments. The trend continued unabated until the 50's, when several close calls with destruction of landmarks forced local citizens to act.
The Historic Savannah Foundation was established to preserve the historic downtown. It took decades of effort, but they largely succeeded in their task and now Savannah is widely regarded as a model for historic preservation.
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