A quick story about the first few mayors of Atlanta.  The Free and Rowdy Party gets the city started, then the Moral Party moves in.

Georgia Harsh had money, friends, and a taste for liquor.  He and some fellow wealthy college students pulled off seven armed robberies for the fun of it- leaving two dead in their wake.  Harsh would be arrested, and then the second act of his life would start.  His life would actually go through a few acts. 

This week, the fascinating life of a criminal from the turn of the century through World War Two.

Find the Moving Through Georgia book here!

I spent some time playing with 'Chat GPT', an online artificial intelligence.  I asked it some questions, and it gave vague, fairly simply worded answers.  Chat GPT is causing a lot of controversy in schools, and making a lot of people's work easier.  This week we let a computer tell us about Northeast Georgia, the Civil War in Athens, and why this is a good podcast!

The South had a plan to press England and France into recognizing their nation; those countries needed cotton, and they had it.  Although the basic idea that Europe's first steps into industrialization would depend on Southern cotton, a few factors ruined the plan.  It might sound a little like a high school history lecture, but the Trent affair and Cotton Diplomacy were key to the South's path toward independence.

Find the Moving Through Georgia book at Amazon

Jane Anderson went from a troubled upbringing in Atlanta to live in Demorest and attend Piedmont College for a time.  She lived an exciting life as a war correspondent in Europe, wrote some short stories, and was romanced by authors, composers and aristocrats.  She also broadcast propaganda for the Nazis at the start of World War Two.  

Digitize Habersham- PDF's of newspaper pages from and about Habersham County.  A free local project.

In honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, a short story from his early career.  Lincoln is challenged to a duel which he accepts- and they do it with swords.

Once a year a tent would go up and the town would have a week of lectures, classes, concerts and events.  This was the Chautauqua, and it was a major event in the life of a rural community.  This week I describe a Chautauqua in Demorest thanks to a newspaper article I found through Digitize Habersham.  This is a local project that digitizes newspapers and other publications- it's searchable and a great resource if you're a fan of local history.

Link to Digitize Habersham

The Moving through Georgia book is available on Amazon

Joseph Standing and another Mormon missionary were abducted from Northeast Georgia, and Standing was shot.  This week the murder of a religious missionary in the mountains near Rome, Georgia.

When I first started looking into Crawford Long I thought it would be too boring for a podcast episode- I was wrong.   Think you wasted your time partying in college?  This week a doctor from Georgia performs surgery on a sleeping patient using what was previously a recreational drug.

The Moving through Georgia book is out- find it at Amazon here

This is an episode I did for a podcast called 'Civil War Sketches', that I don't do anymore.  It's the tale of Jefferson Davis' odyssey from Richmond to Georgia, ending with his arrest and the end of the Confederacy.