Georgia is one of the 7 states that formed Confederacy. Before the outbreak of the civil war, it was one of the leading producing states of cotton in the country. However, during the war, in 1861, the Union executed a naval blockade in order for the Confederacy to stop trading goods with the objective of cutting its resources. As a response to this, the state governor at the time, Joseph E. Brown, ordered farmers to start growing crops instead of cotton.