The History of Slavery in Augusta, Georgia
A deeper look at how slavery shaped our city from colonial times through emancipation
By a Historian from Augusta, Georgia
Slavery in Augusta, Georgia: A Brief Overview
Slavery shaped Augusta from its earliest years and remains part of the city's living landscape. Although Georgia initially banned slavery, Augusta quickly became a gateway for illegal slave importation, and by the mid-1700s the city was deeply connected to the slave economy. As cotton production surged in the early 1800s, Augusta rose to prominence as a regional market, relying on enslaved men, women, and children to cultivate fields, load riverboats, repair levees, and keep commerce moving.
Enslaved laborers also built much of the city's early infrastructure. The Augusta Canal and the Georgia Railroad—two projects that powered Augusta's industrial growth—were constructed largely by enslaved workers whose names rarely appear in official records. Across the river, the Hamburg slave market operated specifically to supply Georgia planters, and thousands of people were bought and sold there before being moved into Augusta.
Yet Augusta's enslaved community created strong institutions, including some of the nation's oldest Black churches, and preserved traditions that shaped the city long after emancipation. Their resilience, faith, and labor helped build Augusta—and their legacy continues to influence its neighborhoods, culture, and history today.
Slavery in Augusta: A Timeline
1733–1751 | Georgia's Ban on Slavery
Georgia's founders outlaw slavery, but Augusta quickly becomes a center of illegal slave importation from South Carolina.
1751 | Slavery Legalized
The colony officially abandons the ban; enslaved labor becomes central to Augusta's early growth.
1793–1820s | Cotton Transforms the Region
The cotton gin explodes demand for enslaved labor. Augusta rises as a key market and transportation hub.
1821 | Hamburg Slave Market Opens
Across the river in South Carolina, Hamburg is intentionally developed as a major slave market serving Georgia planters.
1820s–1850s | Urban and Industrial Enslavement
Enslaved people work not just on plantations but in Augusta's workshops, river landings, warehouses, homes, and emerging factories.
1845–1847 | Canal and Railroad Built by Enslaved Labor
The Augusta Canal and Georgia Railroad rely heavily on enslaved workers, enabling the city's industrial expansion.
1860 | Enslavement Peaks
Nearly half of Georgia's population is enslaved; Augusta's economy depends deeply on their labor.
1865 | Emancipation
Freedom arrives, but formerly enslaved Augustans face enormous challenges and begin building churches, schools, and communities that endure today.
Full History with Primary Sources
A comprehensive examination of slavery in Augusta from the colonial period through emancipation, drawing exclusively from primary documents, state historical archives, and scholarly sources.
Augusta, Georgia's history is intertwined with the institution of slavery from its founding through the Civil War. Established in 1736 as the Georgia colony's second town, Augusta grew from a frontier trading center into a significant commercial hub—its rise built on the labor, skills, and suffering of enslaved African Americans. This essay examines slavery in Augusta from the colonial period through emancipation, drawing exclusively from primary documents, state historical archives, and scholarly sources.
I. The Colonial Era: A Ban That Never Truly Held
When Georgia was founded in 1733, the Trustees—including James Oglethorpe—implemented a prohibition on slavery. Georgia was the only British mainland colony to formally ban slavery as a matter of governing policy. The Trustees believed slavery threatened military security against Spanish Florida, undermined the ideal of smallholding white farmers, and conflicted with their moral vision for the colony.
Primary source: Trustees' Regulations, 1735 (Georgia Colonial Records, vol. 1).
Despite the ban, Augusta quickly became a center for illegal slave importation. Traders from South Carolina covertly moved enslaved Africans into Georgia, especially through Augusta's backcountry routes. Complaints sent to London from the Georgia Trustees in the 1740s confirm that "great numbers of Negroes" were being illicitly introduced.
Primary source: Papers of the Georgia Trustees, 1740–1748 (PRO CO 5/670).
Recognizing the ban's failure, the Trustees reversed course in 1750, and by 1751 slavery was fully legalized under royal administration.
Source: Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia: A History (University of Georgia Press).
II. The Hamburg–Augusta Slave Trading System
Across the Savannah River from Augusta, the town of Hamburg, South Carolina, was founded in 1821 by Henry Shultz. Hamburg quickly developed into one of the largest slave markets in the region.
This was no accident. Until 1856, Georgia law prohibited the importation of enslaved people for resale (the Interstate Slave Trade Ban, Ga. Acts 1817 & 1824). To bypass this restriction, traders set up shop on the South Carolina side, where Georgia planters could purchase enslaved people legally and then bring them across the bridge into Augusta.
The Anti-Slavery Bugle published an eyewitness account on October 27, 1848, detailing Hamburg's explicit purpose:
"Hamburg, South Carolina, was built up just opposite Augusta for the purpose of furnishing slaves to the planters of Georgia… They are penned up at night like sheep, with bulldogs as sentinels."
Primary source: Anti-Slavery Bugle, Oct. 27, 1848, p. 2 (Library of Congress Chronicling America digital archive).
The Richmond County Slave Importation Affidavit Registers (1818–1854) record over 21,000 enslaved persons brought into Georgia through Augusta, each transaction notarized and sworn.
Primary source: Richmond County Superior Court, microfilm collection, Georgia Archives.
III. The Cotton Economy and Enslaved Labor
The cotton gin (1793) transformed Georgia into a major cotton-producing state. By 1860, Georgia held 462,198 enslaved people—44% of its population, the second-highest enslaved population in the South after Virginia.
Source: Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Agriculture & Population Schedules.
Augusta became a key cotton market and transportation hub. Enslaved labor fueled every stage: clearing land, building fences, digging canals, repairing levees, operating presses, and loading bales onto riverboats and railcars.
Enslaved Labor and Augusta's Infrastructure
Two major Augusta infrastructure projects relied heavily on enslaved people:
1. The Georgia Railroad (completed to Marthasville/Atlanta in 1845)
Company records show that the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company owned at least 162 enslaved workers, hired out others, and used them in track-laying, grading, and earthworks.
Primary source: Georgia Railroad & Banking Company Minutes, 1836–1845 (Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library).
Modern confirmation: Wachovia Bank's corporate apology, 2005 (Wachovia Corporate Archives; Associated Press reporting, June 2, 2005).
2. The Augusta Canal (first level completed 1845; expansions 1846–1875)
After Irish laborers fell ill and abandoned the work, contractors shifted almost entirely to enslaved and free Black labor for canal digging, embankment construction, and stonework.
Source: Edward J. Cashin, The Story of the Augusta Canal; Augusta Canal National Heritage Area, official history.
The canal fueled Augusta's textile mills, machine works, and iron foundries—all industries that drew profits from raw cotton cultivated by enslaved people.
IV. Lives of the Enslaved in Augusta
Urban Slavery
Augusta was unusual for its large population of urban enslaved workers. They served as:
- Domestic servants
- Blacksmiths
- Carpenters
- Coopers
- Brick masons
- Wagon drivers
- Factory laborers in canal-powered mills
Enslaved artisans often lived in the same neighborhoods or workshops as free craftsmen, though racial hierarchy was always enforced.
Source: James M. Clifton, Artisans and Slaves in the Urban South; New Georgia Encyclopedia: "Antebellum Artisans."
Burial and Mortality
The city established Cedar Grove Cemetery in 1820 as the burial place for all Black residents—free and enslaved. Early entries listed only numbers, such as "6 blacks, 2 children," without names. Later registers (mid-19th century) began recording names, ages, cause of death, and the enslaver's name.
Primary source: Cedar Grove Cemetery Burial Books A–C, City of Augusta Cemetery Department.
These records remain one of the only surviving datasets naming Augusta's enslaved individuals.
V. Faith, Community, and Resistance
Despite harsh conditions, enslaved Augustans preserved African traditions, maintained family networks, and built clandestine and semi-recognized religious communities.
The Silver Bluff Legacy and Augusta's Black Churches
Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta), founded in 1787 by formerly enslaved believers from the Silver Bluff Baptist Church (near modern-day Beech Island), is one of the oldest independent African American congregations in the United States.
Primary sources: "Silver Bluff Church Records," Charleston Association Minutes (1773–1788); Springfield Baptist Church Historical Roll.
By the Civil War, Augusta had at least five established Black congregations—Springfield, Thankful, Central, Trinity CME, and Bethel AME—despite widespread legal suppression of Black religious gatherings across the South.
Source: Edward J. Cashin, The Black Experience in Augusta.
Forms of Resistance
Resistance included:
- Escape attempts (recorded frequently in Augusta newspapers)
- Work slowdowns
- Sabotage
- Maintaining illicit literacy networks
- Preserving family ties despite forced separations
Primary sources: The Augusta Chronicle, runaway slave ads, 1800–1864 (Newspaper Archive); Georgia Slave Codes (1848).
VI. Civil War and Emancipation
Georgia's Declaration of Causes of Secession (January 19, 1861) cites the preservation of slavery in nearly every paragraph.
Primary source: Georgia Secession Convention Records, 1861.
During the war, Augusta's economy contracted as blockades strangled cotton exports. The Confederate Powderworks (built using enslaved labor hired from local owners) became the city's largest industrial installation.
Primary source: Confederate Engineer Bureau records, 1862–1865.
Freedom arrived in 1865 as Union forces entered the region. Augusta's newly freed population faced daunting challenges: securing wages, reuniting families, establishing schools, and resisting the rapid rise of Black Codes and later Jim Crow.
VII. Conclusion: The Legacy of Slavery in Augusta
Slavery shaped Augusta's economy, its built environment, and its community structures. Enslaved African Americans built the city's canal, railroad, levees, and industries; they cultivated and processed the cotton that brought immense wealth to white planters and merchants; they formed churches, families, and networks that survive today.
The legacies of slavery—economic inequality, residential segregation, and racialized political structures—did not disappear in 1865. They remain embedded in Augusta's physical and social landscape.
A truthful understanding of the city requires acknowledging this history fully and honoring the humanity, resilience, and cultural strength of the thousands of enslaved people whose labor made Augusta possible.
Sources (Publication-Grade)
Primary Sources
- Trustees' Records of the Colony of Georgia, 1733–1752 (Georgia Colonial Records)
- Papers of the Georgia Trustees, PRO CO 5/669–673 (UK National Archives)
- Anti-Slavery Bugle, Oct. 27, 1848 (Library of Congress)
- Richmond County Slave Importation Affidavit Registers, 1818–1854 (Georgia Archives)
- Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 (Population & Agriculture Schedules)
- Georgia Railroad & Banking Company Minute Books, 1836–45 (Hargrett Library)
- Wachovia Apology Documents (Corporate Archive; AP Newswire, June 2, 2005)
- Cedar Grove Cemetery Burial Registers A–C (City of Augusta)
- Georgia Secession Convention Records, "Declaration of Causes," 1861
- Confederate Engineer Bureau Papers, Augusta Powderworks, 1862–65
- The Augusta Chronicle, runaway slave advertisements, 1800–1864
Scholarly & Reputable Secondary Sources
- Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia: A History
- Edward J. Cashin, The Story of the Augusta Canal
- Edward J. Cashin, The Black Experience in Augusta, Georgia
- Angela F. Murphy, The Politics of Slavery in Georgia, 1750–1860
- James M. Clifton, Artisans and Slaves in the Urban South
- New Georgia Encyclopedia entries: "Slavery in Colonial Georgia"; "Slavery in Antebellum Georgia"; "Antebellum Artisans"