Wilkes County, named for British politician and supporter of American independence,
John Wilkes, is considered Georgia's first county established by European Americans; it was the first of eight original counties created in the first state constitution on February 5, 1777. The other seven counties were organized from existing colonial parishes. Wilkes was unique in being made up of land ceded in 1773 by the indigenous
Creek and
Cherokee Native American nations in their respective Treaties of Augusta. Its location was important due to its close proximity to the
Atlantic seaboard fall line, and hence access to water power. Between 1790 and 1854, Wilkes County's area was reduced as it was divided to organize new counties following the growth of population in the area. The Georgia legislature formed the counties of
Elbert,
Oglethorpe, and
Lincoln entirely from portions of Wilkes County. Wilkes also contributed part of the lands used in the creation of
Madison,
Warren,
Taliaferro,
Hart,
McDuffie, and
Greene Counties. Wilkes County was the site of one of the most important battles of the
American Revolutionary War to be fought in Georgia. During the
Battle of Kettle Creek in 1779, the American
Patriot forces were victorious over
British Loyalists. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, colonists depended on enslaved African-American workers and whites to clear land, develop
plantations, and cultivate and process cotton in this area. Long-staple cotton would not grow in this upland areas and short-staple cotton was originally too labor-intensive to be profitable. In 1793, American
Eli Whitney perfected his revolutionary invention of the
cotton gin at Mount Pleasant, a cotton plantation east of Washington. It allowed mechanization of the processing of short-staple cotton, making its cultivation profitable in the upland areas. As a result, there was a dramatic increase in the development of new cotton plantations throughout the
Deep South to cultivate short-staple cotton. Settlers increased pressure on the federal government to remove Native Americans from the region, including the
Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast. In 1794, Revolutionary War veteran
Elijah Clarke, led a group of men from Wilkes County into traditionally Creek lands and established a town and several forts and called it the
Trans-Oconee Republic. While short lived, the incursion was part of a broader movement of incursion into traditionally native lands. Congress passed the
Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the government forcibly removed most of the members of these tribes to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Production of short-staple cotton in the Deep South soon superseded that of long-staple cotton, grown primarily on the
Sea Islands and in the
Low Country. Such expansion dramatically increased the demand for slave labor in the Deep South, resulting in a longstanding domestic slave trade that transported more than a million slaves in forced migrations from the Upper South.
King Cotton brought great wealth to many planters in the decades before the Civil War. None of the battles of the
American Civil War was fought in or near Wilkes County. But here
President Jefferson Davis met for the final time with the Confederate Cabinet, and they officially dissolved the government of the
Confederate States of America. Wilkes County was the last-known location of the
gold rumored to have been lost from the Confederate Treasury. The present-day
Wilkes County Courthouse was built in
Washington at the site of the cabinet meeting. ==Geography==