On the 21st of January 1861, 293 delegates signed the Ordinance of Secession inside the statehouse in Milledgeville. Governor Joseph E. Brown declared that Abraham Lincoln's election would lead to the abolition of slavery and urged Georgians to resist Northern aggression.
By summer 1861, the Union naval blockade shut down cotton exports and halted manufactured imports while planters refused to grow food. Food that normally came by rail from Northern states stopped arriving entirely causing desperate shortages for towns and poor white women who raided stores for supplies.
Deserter gangs formed in north Georgia mountains where many groups operated including over 1,000 deserters hiding on Black Jack Island and Soldiers Camp Island within the Okefenokee Swamp. Backcountry areas like Gum Swamp Creek became home to similar bands in Pulaski, Montgomery, and Telfair counties.
Jefferson Davis replaced Joseph E. Johnston with John Bell Hood in July 1864 after successive flanking maneuvers by Sherman's armies. Hood attempted several unsuccessful counterattacks at Peachtree Creek and Atlanta before the city fell on the 2nd of September 1864.
On the 16th of April 1865, the Battle of Columbus was fought on the Georgia-Alabama border. In 1935, the state legislature officially declared this engagement the last battle of the War Between the States.