Georgia Milestones Assessment System Social Studies Grade 8

Question 1

Georgia is a southeastern state. Which set of neighbors matches its borders?

Accepted Answer

Florida to the south, Alabama to the west, Tennessee and North Carolina to the north, South Carolina to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean on the coast.

Question 2

A traveler crosses Georgia from the northwest corner toward the Atlantic. Which order of regions matches that trip?

Accepted Answer

Appalachian Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Blue Ridge, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain.

Question 3

Which description fits Georgia's Appalachian Plateau?

Accepted Answer

It is the smallest region, tucked into the northwest corner, and includes Lookout Mountain.

Question 4

Why did farms and towns grow in Georgia's Ridge and Valley region?

Accepted Answer

Long valleys between the forested ridges have soil and streams that can support farms and towns.

Question 5

What is true of Georgia's Blue Ridge region?

Accepted Answer

It contains Brasstown Bald, the state's highest point, and receives the heaviest rainfall.

Question 6

Why does the Piedmont hold such a large place in modern Georgia?

Accepted Answer

Atlanta and a large share of the state's people live on its rolling hills.

Question 7

Which statement describes Georgia's Coastal Plain?

Accepted Answer

It is the largest region, running from the fall line to the Atlantic and supporting much of the state's farming.

Question 8

What does the fall line mark in Georgia?

Accepted Answer

The boundary where the Piedmont meets the Coastal Plain, where rivers drop and early mills used the waterpower.

Question 9

Augusta, Macon, and Columbus grew along the fall line. What advantage did that spot give them?

Accepted Answer

River cargo had to stop at the shoals, so the towns became trading places and mill sites.

Question 10

How do Georgia's barrier islands affect the mainland behind them?

Accepted Answer

They take the force of waves and storms and shelter the salt marshes and the coast.

Question 11

Which river forms most of Georgia's boundary with South Carolina and reaches the Atlantic at the city of Savannah?

Accepted Answer

The Savannah River.

Question 12

A raindrop enters the Chattahoochee in the north Georgia mountains and is not drawn off for city use. Where does that river system lead?

Accepted Answer

South and southwest, along part of the Alabama border, and on toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Question 13

Which two rivers join to form the Altamaha, a river that stays inside Georgia until it reaches the Atlantic?

Accepted Answer

The Ocmulgee and the Oconee.

Question 14

Which pattern best describes Georgia's climate?

Accepted Answer

A humid subtropical climate, with hot summers, mild winters, and a longer growing season in the south than in the mountains.

Question 15

What is the Okefenokee?

Accepted Answer

A large freshwater swamp in the southeastern Coastal Plain.

Question 16

The Eastern Continental Divide crosses north Georgia. What does that high ground separate?

Accepted Answer

Rivers that run toward the Atlantic from rivers that run toward the Gulf of Mexico.

Question 17

How did the earliest Paleo people in what is now Georgia most likely live?

Accepted Answer

In small bands that moved with the game and hunted with stone-tipped spears.

Question 18

What set Archaic people apart from the earlier Paleo bands in this region?

Accepted Answer

They used a wider mix of deer, plants, fish, and shellfish, and they returned to seasonal camps.

Question 19

Which development belongs to the Woodland period in Georgia?

Accepted Answer

More settled villages, pottery, burial mounds, and the beginnings of farming.

Question 20

Which way of life matches the Mississippian people of Georgia?

Accepted Answer

Corn farmers who lived in towns led by chiefs and built large earthen mounds.

Question 21

What was Etowah, near present-day Cartersville?

Accepted Answer

A major Mississippian town with large platform mounds beside the Etowah River.

Question 22

Before removal, how were Muscogee (Creek) communities in Georgia organized?

Accepted Answer

As river towns that farmed, decided issues in councils, and were linked in a confederacy.

Question 23

How did Sequoyah's syllabary change Cherokee life in north Georgia?

Accepted Answer

It gave the Cherokee language a written form, and the Cherokee Phoenix at New Echota printed in Cherokee and English.

Question 24

What was New Echota in the 1820s?

Accepted Answer

The Cherokee capital near present-day Calhoun, with a constitution, a court, and a newspaper.

Question 25

What was the effect of the gold found near Dahlonega in 1828?

Accepted Answer

Miners rushed onto Cherokee land, and pressure grew to take that land from the Cherokee Nation.

Question 26

What did the U.S. Supreme Court decide in Worcester v. Georgia in 1832, and what happened next?

Accepted Answer

The Court said Georgia's laws did not govern the Cherokee Nation, but the state ignored the ruling and President Jackson did not enforce it.

Question 27

Who agreed to the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, and who opposed it?

Accepted Answer

A minority Treaty Party signed away the Cherokee homeland, while Principal Chief John Ross and most Cherokee people opposed the treaty.

Question 28

What happened to the Cherokee who remained in Georgia in 1838?

Accepted Answer

U.S. troops forced them from their homes, and thousands died of disease and exposure on the journey west.

Question 29

Why did Creek leaders put William McIntosh to death in 1825?

Accepted Answer

He signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, ceding remaining Creek land in Georgia, which Creek law forbade without national consent.

Question 30

Why did King George II grant a charter for Georgia in 1732?

Accepted Answer

To aid poor British settlers, to stand between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, and to produce goods such as silk and wine.

Question 31

Which role did James Oglethorpe actually play in early Georgia?

Accepted Answer

He led the first settlers in 1733, planned Savannah, and commanded the defense against Spain, but he was not a royal governor.

Question 32

How was Savannah founded in 1733?

Accepted Answer

Oglethorpe placed it on Yamacraw Bluff and laid it out as wards built around open squares.

Question 33

How did Tomochichi help the new colony at Savannah?

Accepted Answer

As leader of the Yamacraw, he allowed the English to settle at Yamacraw Bluff and later traveled to London with Oglethorpe.

Question 34

Why was Mary Musgrove important to Oglethorpe's settlement?

Accepted Answer

Known also as Coosaponakeesa, she interpreted and helped the English and the Creek trade and negotiate.

Question 35

Which rules did the trustees put on colonial Georgia?

Accepted Answer

They limited land sales, banned slavery and rum, and refused to admit Catholics, whom they feared would side with Spain.

Question 36

What did the malcontents in Savannah want the trustees to change?

Accepted Answer

They wanted the bans lifted so colonists could own enslaved workers, drink rum, and buy and sell larger tracts of land.

Question 37

Which colonists asked the trustees not to allow slavery in Georgia?

Accepted Answer

The Salzburgers at Ebenezer and the Highland Scots at Darien.

Question 38

What was the result of the fighting at Bloody Marsh in 1742?

Accepted Answer

A British and colonial force on St. Simons Island turned back a Spanish landing from Florida.

Question 39

When and how did slavery become legal in colonial Georgia?

Accepted Answer

The trustees dropped the ban in 1751, and enslaved labor soon supported coastal rice plantations.

Question 40

What changed when Georgia became a royal colony in 1752?

Accepted Answer

The king appointed the governor, colonists could buy and sell land, and an assembly could pass laws.

Question 41

What is James Wright remembered for as Georgia's third royal governor?

Accepted Answer

Under him the colony gained land and trade, and he stayed loyal to Britain during the Revolution.

Question 42

Why was Georgia slower than the other colonies to join the protests against Britain?

Accepted Answer

It was the youngest colony, many settlers still depended on British trade and protection, and a strong royal governor held power.

Question 43

Which three Georgians signed the Declaration of Independence?

Accepted Answer

Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton.

Question 44

What happened at Kettle Creek in February 1779?

Accepted Answer

Elijah Clarke's Patriot militia defeated a Loyalist force in the Georgia backcountry.

Question 45

What was the outcome of the 1779 siege of Savannah?

Accepted Answer

American and French troops failed to retake the city, and the British held it until 1782.

Question 46

When did Georgia ratify the U.S. Constitution, and where did it stand in the order of states?

Accepted Answer

It ratified on January 2, 1788, and was the fourth state to approve the Constitution.

Question 47

What was the Yazoo land fraud, and how did the Supreme Court treat the repeal of the sale?

Accepted Answer

Bribed legislators sold Georgia's western land cheaply in 1795, and the Court said the state could not cancel that contract.

Question 48

How did Georgia's headright system hand out land after the Revolution?

Accepted Answer

White heads of households could claim a set amount, with extra acres counted for family members and enslaved workers.

Question 49

What was a Georgia land lottery in the early 1800s?

Accepted Answer

A drawing that let eligible white Georgians buy surveyed lots of former Creek and Cherokee land at a low price.

Question 50

What was unjust about Georgia's 1832 land lottery?

Accepted Answer

It gave white Georgians lots in Cherokee country while many Cherokee families still lived there.

Question 51

How did Eli Whitney's cotton gin change farming in Georgia?

Accepted Answer

It cleaned short-staple cotton so quickly that cotton planting and slavery spread through the interior.

Question 52

How widespread was slavery in Georgia by 1860?

Accepted Answer

It had spread from the rice coast into the Piedmont, and enslaved people were about 44 percent of the population.

Question 53

Why did cotton and slavery dominate Georgia politics in the decades before the Civil War?

Accepted Answer

Cotton was the state's main export, and leaders tied the state's wealth to enslaved labor.

Question 54

How did Atlanta begin?

Accepted Answer

As Terminus, the southern end of the state-built Western and Atlantic Railroad, where other rail lines later met.

Question 55

What reason did Georgia's secession convention put at the center of its break with the Union?

Accepted Answer

Protecting slavery after Abraham Lincoln's election.

Question 56

What was the result of the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863?

Accepted Answer

Confederate forces won a costly victory in northwest Georgia, and the Union army fell back to Chattanooga.

Question 57

How did Atlanta fall to the Union in 1864?

Accepted Answer

William T. Sherman's army captured it in September after a summer campaign against Confederate defenders.

Question 58

What was the military purpose of Sherman's March to the Sea?

Accepted Answer

To destroy railroads, food, and other supplies that supported Confederate armies, and to reach Savannah.

Question 59

What happened to Savannah at the end of Sherman's march in December 1864?

Accepted Answer

The city surrendered on December 21, and Union troops occupied it instead of burning it.

Question 60

Why did about 13,000 Union prisoners die at Andersonville?

Accepted Answer

Camp Sumter was badly overcrowded, and prisoners lacked enough food, shelter, and clean water, so disease spread.

Question 61

What finally abolished slavery everywhere in the United States, including Georgia?

Accepted Answer

The 13th Amendment, ratified in December 1865.

Question 62

What did the Freedmen's Bureau do in Georgia after the Civil War?

Accepted Answer

It helped formerly enslaved people with schools, food, and labor contracts.

Question 63

Why did sharecropping so often leave Georgia farmers in debt?

Accepted Answer

Farmers owed a share of the crop to the landowner and still owed merchants who had advanced supplies on credit.

Question 64

What did the Georgia General Assembly do to its Black members in 1868?

Accepted Answer

It expelled them, claiming that Black men could vote but could not hold office.