Because of this, Harris has become the sixth-wealthiest county in Georgia in terms of per capita income and the wealthiest in the state outside of Metro Atlanta.

The county was settled by European Americans largely after the federal government had removed the indigenous Creek people (Muscogee) in the 1830s, under treaties by which they ceded most of their homelands to the United States.

In the antebellum era, parts of the county were developed for cotton plantations, the premier commodity crop.

Planters acquired numerous enslaved African Americans as laborers from the Upper South through the domestic slave trade.

He was described by journalist Karen Branan in her 2016 book about these events as a white, "near penniless plowboy-playboy"[5] and "notorious predator of black women.

[7][8] Also murdered by the lynch mob were Eugene Harrington, Burrell Hardaway,[9] and Johnie Moore.

Four days later Gilbert was dead, shot while held in jail by the Harris County Sheriff, who said it was self-defense.

In 2016 the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project of Northeastern University reported on Gilbert's death in custody.

The majority of Harris County is located in the middle Chattahoochee River–Lake Harding subbasin of the ACF River Basin (Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin), with the exception of the county's southeastern border area, south of Ellerslie, which is located in the middle Chattahoochee River–Walter F. George Lake subbasin of the same ACF River Basin as that part of the county is drained by Bull Creek, which flows into Upatoi Creek south of Columbus.

This trend has been attributed to the effect of Columbus's suburbs extending into the county, but it is part of the broader realignment among conservatives in the region.