nerable
citizen of Augusta, illuminating his residence from dome to cellar,
blazoned with candles this device upon his gateway--"Georgia, right or
wrong--Georgia!" Never was a movement so general, so spontaneous. Those
who charged the leaders of that day with precipitating their States into
revolution upon a wild dream of power, did not know the spirit and the
temper of the people who composed that movement. Northern men who had
moved South and engaged in business, as a general thing, stood shoulder
to shoulder with their Southern brethren, and went out with the
companies that first responded to the call to war. The South sacrificed
much, in a material point of view, in going into civil conflict. In the
decade between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the South had increased
three billions of dollars, and Georgia alone had shown a growth measured
by two hundred millions. Her aggregate wealth at the time she passed the
Ordinance of Secession was six hundred and seventy-two millions, double
what it is to-day. In one year her increase was sixty-two millions.
Business of all kinds was prospering. But her people did not count the
cost when they considered that their rights were invaded. Georgia was
the fifth State to secede. South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and
Florida had preceded her. Of the six States which formed the Provisional
Government, Georgia had relatively a smaller number of slaves than any,
and her State debt was only a little more than two and a half millions
of dollars. Her voting population was barely 100,000, but she furnished,
when the test came, 120,000 soldiers to the Confederate army.

As a contemporary print of those times remarked, "The Secession
convention of Georgia was not divided upon the subject of rights or
wrongs, but of remedies." Senator Toombs declared that the convention
had sovereign powers, "limited only by God and the right." This policy
opened the way to changing the great seal and adopting a new flag. Mr.
Toombs was made chairman of the committee on Foreign Relations and
became at once Prime Minister of the young Republic. He offered a
resolution providing that a congress of seceded States be called to meet
in Montgomery on the 4th of February. He admonished the convention that,
as it had destroyed one government, it was its pressing duty to build up
another. It was at his request that commissioners were appointed from
Georgia to the other States in the South. Mr. Toombs also introduced