The largest of the U.S. states east of the Mississippi River and the youngest of the 13 former English colonies, Georgia was founded in 1732, at which time its boundaries were even larger—including much of the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi. By the mid-19th century, Georgia had the greatest number of plantations of any state in the South, and in many respects epitomized plantation culture and economic dependence on slavery. In 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman invaded Georgia, captured Atlanta and began his infamous March to the Sea, cutting a 200-mile-wide swath of fire and destruction reaching all the way to Savannah. Georgia’s landscape varies greatly as it sweeps from the Appalachian Mountains in the north to the marshes of the Atlantic coast on the southeast to the Okefenokee Swamp on the south.