Milledgeville, GA news and local guide

As capital, Milledgeville became a center of politics and cotton commerce, built in part by enslaved people who worked on plantations and in town as domestic servants, tradespeople and laborers. By 1828 nearly half its 1,599 residents were enslaved, and only 27 were free Black people. The state added a penitentiary and the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum, now Central State Hospital, and taverns, hotels, shops, banks and newspapers followed. Oglethorpe University was founded there in 1838, and the town gained a new statehouse, now the Old State Capitol, and an executive mansion, now the Old Governor's Mansion. After Lincoln's election, Georgia's secession convention met in Milledgeville on January 16, 1861, and on January 19 adopted the Ordinance of Secession by 208 to 80, making Georgia the fifth state to secede. During the war the town sent troops and supplies to the Confederacy and suffered inflation, shortages and a food riot, and in November 1864 Union forces reached it during the March to the Sea. After the war the capital moved to Atlanta, and Milledgeville turned to public institutions and higher education. Sources Wikipedia: Milledgeville, Georgia