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 on fire, and a cutter was sent to Cork for her relief. Thus Savannah perfected not only the cotton-gin, but steam navigation, which revolutionized the industry and commerce of the world. Savannah continued to prosper down to the period of the Civil War, having completed the Georgia Central Railway, the longest and most important line in the South and built up large foreign and domestic commerce at her port.

When the troubles leading up to the Civil War opened, Savannah did not wait for the State of Georgia to secede, but, true to the traditions of Revolutionary ancestry, seized Fort Pulaski on the 3d of January, 1861. The State convention, which framed a new constitution for Georgia, assembled in Savannah on the 7th of March, and the flag of the Confederacy was thrown to the breeze from the United States Custom House with a salute of seven guns, one for each State of the young nation. The moving spirit of secession in Savannah, the "Mad Anthony Wayne" of the State, was Francis S. Bartow, a young man who, failing to receive permission from the State authorities to go to Virginia, summoned his company and went without orders, sending