Editing Sumter County, Georgia (section)

=== Foundation and antebellum years ===
Sumter County was established by an act of the [[Georgia state legislature|state legislature]] on December 26, 1831, four years after the [[Creek Indians]] were forced from the region when the state acquired the territory from them in the 1825 [[Treaty of Indian Springs (1825)|Treaty of Indian Springs]]. Sumter, the state's 80th county, was created after population increases by a division of [[Lee County, Georgia|Lee County]], now situated to its south. The county was named for former General and [[United States Senate|United States Senator]] [[Thomas Sumter]] (1734–1832) of South Carolina.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=REtEXQNWq6MC&pg=PA216 | title=Historical Gazetteer of the United States | publisher=Routledge | date=May 13, 2013 | access-date=November 30, 2013 | author=Hellmann, Paul T. | pages=216| isbn=978-1135948597 }}</ref> When the county was organized, Sumter was 97 years old and the last surviving general of the [[American Revolution]] (1775–1783).

Shortly thereafter, a committee chose a central site for the county seat, and laid out what became the town of [[Americus, Georgia|Americus]]. Many of the county's earliest white residents acquired their land through an 1827 state [[land lottery]]. Like many other white settlers, they quickly developed their property for cotton cultivation. Since the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the 18th century, short-staple cotton was the crop of choice throughout the [[Black Belt in the American South|Black Belt of the South]].

The rich, black soil, combined with ready market access via the [[Flint River (Georgia)|Flint River]] (bordering the county on the east) or the [[Chattahoochee River]] (farther west), put Sumter among the state's most prosperous Black Belt counties by the 1840s and 1850s. Cotton agriculture was economically dependent on [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved African Americans]]. By the [[1850 United States census|1850 census]], the demographic makeup of the county had become 6,469 whites, 3,835 enslaved African Americans, and 18 [[free people of color]]. By the [[1860 United States census|1860 census]], the county had 4,536 whites, 4,890 enslaved African Americans and two free people of color.