Have you ever heard of something that sounds important, but also kind of confusing, like the Bourbon Triumvirate?

What even is that?

A secret club, a fancy dessert, a band?

Actually, it was none of those things.

Instead, it was a group of Georgia's three most powerful and prominent politicians who attempted to shape the state in the decades following Reconstruction.

Three men, one state, and a legacy that's, well, complicated.

(upbeat music) In the immediate years following the Civil War, Georgia, along with all other former Confederate states, entered a period of Reconstruction.

During this era, the United States worked to bring the country back together and rebuild the South, which had been badly damaged during the war.

Cities, farms and railroads had to be repaired and the economy had to be restarted without enslaved labor.

For the first time, roughly 4 million formerly enslaved people across the South gained their freedom and citizenship.

Black men who made up a large portion of the South's electorate were now eligible to vote.

Things were changing in Georgia, but not everyone supported this.

White conservative Democrats began losing their political grip to the progressive Republican party, which was overwhelmingly supported by Black voters.

So Georgia's Democrats launched an effort to redeem or win back their state from Republican influence.

Known as Redeemers, these Democrats worked to remove Republican lawmakers from office, restore Democratic power, and establish a society that was governed by white supremacy.

Many Redeemers also wanted Georgia to return to the cotton based economy of its antebellum days.

But another group within the Redeemers had different plans for Georgia and soon gained the upper hand.

These Democrats believed the South's economy should depend on manufacturing and other industries, not cotton.

Radical Republicans called this group Bourbons, which referred to an old French ruling family that returned to power after the French Revolution.

Georgia's Bourbons wanted to industrialize the state's economy and empower it to be more self-sufficient.

This meant attracting investors from the North to build mills and factories, expanding railroads and moving away from the South's reliance on cotton.

They wanted farmers to diversify or vary their crops by growing less cotton and more of the foods and grains usually purchased from other parts of the country.

Diversifying agriculture would allow Georgians to buy from Georgia and it would keep badly needed money from leaving the state.

This modern approach to the economy was called the New South, and while that may sound like the Bourbons supported a South that was totally different from its antebellum days, they didn't.

The idea behind the New South did not propose changes to social or political structures.

White supremacy, Democratic dominated politics, low taxes and limited government were still at the heart of the Bourbon campaign.

So that brings us to some of the people who strongly supported the New South movement.

Joseph E. Brown, Alfred H. Colquitt, and John B. Gordon.

Together these three were known as the Bourbon Triumvirate.

The word triumvirate refers to a group of three people who share power.

So who were the Bourbon Triumvirate?

Let's start with Joseph E. Brown.

A firm believer in slavery and states rights.

Brown was a leading secessionist.

This means he strongly supported Georgia withdrawing from the United States to join the Confederacy.

He served as Georgia's governor from 1851 to 1865, and was the only governor to serve four terms.

He led the state through the entirety of the Civil War and went on to become the President of Western and Atlantic Railroad following the end of the war.

During this time, he amassed great wealth and became one of Georgia's first millionaires.

He later returned to politics and served as a US Senator from 1880 to 1890.

Next up, Alfred H. Colquitt.

Colquitt was one of the state's leading planters and advocated for Georgia's secession from the United States.

He joined the Confederate Army and fought in some of the Civil War's major battles.

This led him to being commissioned as a Major General.

After the Civil War, Colquitt strongly opposed Republican Reconstruction policies in the South and served as Georgia's governor from 1876 to 1882.

And as a US Senator from 1883 to 1894.

And lastly, there was John B. Gordon.

Gordon was born on a plantation in Upson County, Georgia and managed his father's coal mine in the Appalachian Plateau region before the Civil War.

He rose to prominence in the Confederate Army, also achieving the rank of Major General by the end of the war.

He was an outspoken critic of Reconstruction and is thought to have been the leader of the Georgia Chapter of the Klu Klux Klan.

He served as a US Senator from 1872 to 1880, was Georgia's governor from 1886 until 1890, and then returned to the US Senate from 1891 until 1897.

As you can see, these three leaders rotated the state's top political positions for decades.

While the trio pushed the state to embrace a New South for its economy, they fought to maintain a social and political society that reflected Georgia's old ways.

So did the Bourbon Triumvirates' idea of a New South actually come to fruition?

Well, they did find success in attracting Northern investors and industry to Georgia, but attempts to diversify agriculture ultimately failed.

Georgia very much remained a cotton state, and the Triumvirates Conservative fiscal policies neglected the needs of poor farmers and laborers while heavily favoring wealthy elites.

They were most successful, however, in maintaining a democratic stronghold in Georgia politics and promoting white supremacy.

During their leadership, a number of Jim Crow laws were passed, which enforced racial segregation and harsher restrictions on voting and threats of violence effectively disenfranchised Black voters.

As a result, the trio's rule helped strengthen social and economic inequalities that lasted decades.

Eventually, the Bourbon Triumvirates power began to decline in the late 1880s.

They were clashing on more issues and other political leaders were gaining popularity.

The triumvirate effectively ended when both Colquitt and Brown died in 1894.

Like I said, the legacy of the Bourbon Triumvirate is a complicated one.

The significance of these three people, Joseph E. Brown, Alfred H. Colquitt, and John B. Gordon lies in both their roles in attempting to industrialize Georgia's economy and their efforts to maintain the established racial and political order of the South.

(upbeat music)