When the Union blockade prevented Georgia from exporting its plentiful cotton in exchange for key imports, Brown ordered farmers to grow food instead, but the breakdown of transport systems led to desperate shortages.

There was not much fighting in Georgia until September 1863, when Confederates under Braxton Bragg defeated William S. Rosecrans at Chickamauga Creek.

When news of the march reached Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia, whole Georgian regiments deserted, feeling they were needed at home.

If we fail to resist now, we will never again have the strength to resist.Later that month, after South Carolina became the first state to issue an Ordinance of Secession, celebrations broke out in Savannah, Georgia.

The ordinance cited the views of U.S. president-elect Abraham Lincoln and that of the Republican Party against "the subject of African slavery", anti-slavery sentiment in northern free states, and perceived support among northerners for equality for African Americans as reasons for Georgia's declaring of secession: The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present ... the causes which have led to the separation.

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding confederate States, with reference to the subject of African slavery.

The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races ... were boldly proclaimed by its leaders, and applauded by its followers.

[5] In a February 1861 speech to the Virginia secession convention, Georgian Henry Lewis Benning stated that the main reason as to why Georgia declared secession from the Union was due to "a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.

"[6] Governor Joseph E. Brown was a leading secessionist and led efforts to remove the state from the Union and into the Confederacy.

In A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South, Jonathan Dean Sarris examines the wartime experiences of Fannin and Lumpkin counties.

On November 29, 1864, six Georgians trying to enlist in the U.S. Army - Thomas Bell, Harvey Brewster, James T. Hughes, James B. Nelson, Elijah Robinson, and Samuel Lovell - were executed by the notorious Confederate guerilla John P. Gatewood, "the long-haired, red-bearded beast from Georgia" - but, Peter Parris, and Wyatt J. Parton escaped the execution.

The legislature imposed cotton quotas and made it a crime to grow an excess, but the food shortages continued to worsen, especially in the towns.

[18] In more than a dozen instances across the state, poor white women raided stores and captured supply wagons to get such necessities as bacon, corn, flour, and cotton yarn.

"[20] As conditions at home worsened late in the war more and more soldiers deserted the army to attend to their suffering farms and families.

By 1864, the Wiregrass Region of Georgia was no longer fully controlled by the Confederate government due to layout and deserter gangs.

Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May 1864, opposed by the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston.

In July, Confederate president Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with the more aggressive John Bell Hood, who began challenging the Union Army in a series of damaging frontal assaults.

Hood's army was eventually besieged in Atlanta and the city fell on September 2, setting the stage for Sherman's March to the Sea and hastening the end of the war.

He began his famous Sherman's March to the Sea, living off the land then burning plantations, wrecking railroads, killing livestock, and freeing slaves.

Sherman himself estimated that the campaign had inflicted $100 million (about $1.4 billion in 2012 dollars)[32] in damages, about one fifth of which "inured to our advantage" while the "remainder is simple waste and destruction.

In July 1864, during the Atlanta campaign, Sherman ordered approximately 400 Roswell mill workers, mostly women, arrested as traitors and shipped as prisoners to the North with their children.

Other sites related to the Civil War include Stone Mountain, Fort Pulaski, and the Atlanta Cyclorama.

Portions of the Civil War-era Western & Atlantic Railroad have historical markers commemorating events during the war, including several sites associated with the Andrews Raid.

Another area near Atlanta with Civil War history is in the Sweetwater Creek State Park in Douglas County, Georgia.