Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

April 1

1789 In New York City, the U.S. House of Representatives held its first official meeting in New York City. Various delegates from the 13 states had been present since March 4, but a quorum was not assembled until April 1. Representing Georgia in the House were James Jackson, Abraham Baldwin, and George Mathews. In the Senate from Georgia were William Few and James Gunn.

1812 Politician and abolitionist Tunis Campbell was born in Middlebrook, New Jersey. Campbell was a highly intelligent, well-educated African American who early on became an abolitionist after studying to be a missionary. Initially rejected for military service in the Civil War, Campbell finally served near the war's end on Hilton Head Island, S.C. In 1865 he was appointed military governor of five of Georgia's sea islands, where he provided schools for freed blacks and began implementing Sherman's order distributing land to blacks. In 1867, Campbell was appointed a voting registrar and bought a plantation in McIntosh County, which he used as a home for freed blacks. In 1868, he was elected a delegate to Georgia's constitutional convention. He was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1869, but was among the blacks expelled from the General Assembly on the grounds that Georgia's constitution did not specifically allow blacks to hold public office. In Washington D.C., Campbell's protest of his expulsion helped lead to a second phase of military reconstruction for Georgia. Campbell finally took his Georgia Senate seat in 1870 and was re-elected in 1871. But his militancy in advocating black rights had made him many enemies. Campbell was arrested in 1874 and spent the next few years as a leased convict. After being released in 1877, he and his family moved to Washington, D.C., then to Boston, where he became involved in missionary work. He died in Boston on Dec. 4, 1891.

1870 After a two-day stay in Augusta, Robert E. Lee and his daughter arrived in Savannah to be greeted by thundering ovations. The ailing 63-year-old hero had come to Savannah for a brief vacation in hopes of restoring his declining health. Arriving at the home of his host, Gen. Alexander Lawton, Lee was greeted with cheering crowds and two brass bands that played such songs as "Dixie," "Hail to the Chief," and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" late into the night. Unable to sleep with all the celebration outside, Lee finally had to depart out the back door and spend the night at the home of Andrew Low.

1893 Musician and educator Hugh Hodgson was born in Athens, Ga.. By age four, he showed a unique talent for the piano -- and by age fourteen he was studying piano in Europe. Hodgson returned home to attend the University of Georgia, where he played tennis and majored in zoology while continuing his music interests. In 1915, Hodgson played in New York's Carnegie Hall. He was an organist for a number of Athens churches before being appointed director of music at the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens in 1925. Here he began giving informal lectures and recitals of music -- not only to the students at the Institute but to anyone who wanted to listen. Thus began a lifelong devotion to bringing music to common people. In 1928, Hodgson became a professor at the University of Georgia, heading the newly created Department of Music (a position he held until his retirement in 1960). While at the University, he won numerous awards and taught and influenced countless students. Hodgson continued his efforts to popularize various forms of music by presenting an annual opera, organizing a Little Symphony Orchestra, directing the Men's Glee Club, establishing chamber music festivals, and performing recitals and delivering lectures nationwide. Even after his retirement, Hodgson remained active as a church musician and guest professor and performer. Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill praised Hodgson by writing: "Hugh Hodgson is to music what Johnny Appleseed was to the Northwest and its orchards. He burns with a passion to make music available to everyone." Hodgson died in Atlanta on Aug. 12, 1969. The concert hall at the University of Georgia's School of Music is named in his honor.

1925 Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, Georgia for his third visit to the state he would later call his "second home." While visiting, he penned a series of nine editorials for the Macon Telegraph.

1929 Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College formed the Atlanta University system and agreed to share facilities. Later, Clark College and Morris Brown would join later, making the complex the largest African-American consortium of higher education in the United States.

1939 Atlanta Braves famed knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro was born in Blaine, Ohio. On Aug. 3, 1997, Niekro was elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. 

1988 Nell Jackson, a pioneer in women's track and field, died. Born July 1, 1929 in Athens, Ga., she attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. While a student there, she was a member of the U.S. Olympic track team.In 1951, Jackson also competed in the first Pan-American Games, taking second place in the 200-meter race and serving on the first-place sprint relay team. Later, she held the U.S. 200-meter record. Jackson became women's track coach at Tuskegee, Illinois State, Illinois, and Michigan State. Jackson was head coach of the women's U.S. Olympic team in 1956 and 1972 -- becoming the first African American to serve as head coach of a U.S. Olympic team. Jackson served many atheletic organizations, including the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Amateur Athletic Federation. She went on to become director of physical education at the State University of New York in Binghamton.

1995 DeKalb County's Fernbank Museum of Natural History opened its "Great Dinosaurs of China" exhibit.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1740 Writing to the Duke of Newcastle in London, James Oglethorpe wrote the following from Charles Town, South Carolina:

"War being declared with Spain and the Spaniards having killed some of our men, I took the forts of Picolata and Saint Francis de Pupa from them and several prisoners . . . .

"We expect a great body of Indians to our assistance. The Cherokees, I hear, are already upon their march with 500 men, and more are to follow. And I hope we shall have a larger assistance from the Creeks. . . . I am in great hopes of taking the town [St. Augustine]. There are 2000 odd hundred people, men, women, and children in it. If I drive them into the castle [the Castillo de San Marcos fortress], they, being pestered with useless mouths, will very probably make them surrender upon my bombarding the place.

"This province [South Carolina] is very much reduced by sickness, revolts of the Negroes and other accidents, yet the danger to them from [St.] Augustine is so great that they raise and maintain a regiment, a troop of horse, a large body of volunteers for that seige. But their credit being very low and their taxes very heavy they could not find money for this expense, and I have been obliged to advance them £4000 Sterling upon the credit of their future taxes, without which the siege [of St. Augustine] could not be carried on."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743, Vol. II (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), pp. 456-57.

1839 During her visit to her husband's plantation on St. Simons Island, English actress Fanny Kemble Butler took a ride on this day. Her journey took her over a strip of land claimed by two adjacent land owners -- Mrs. Margaret Wylly, a widow, and Dr. Thomas Hazzard. The dispute, which would eventually lead to Hazzard killing Mrs. Wylly's son, had developed into a bitter feud, as evidenced by Fanny's journal entry for this day:

". . . While going along this delightful boundary of these two neighboring estates, my mind not unnaturally dwelt upon the terms of deadly feud in which the two families owning them are living with each other. A horrible quarrel has occurred quite lately upon the subject of the ownership of this very ground I was skirting, between Dr. H[azzard] and young Mr. W]ylly]; they have challenged each other, and what I am going to you is a good example of the sort of spirit that grows up among slaveholders. So read it, for it is curious to people who have not lived habitually among savages. The terms of the challenge that has passed between them have appeared like a sort of advertisement in the local paper, and are to the effect that they are to fight at a certain distance with certain weapons -- firearms, of course; that there is to be on the person of each a white paper, or mark, immediately over the region of the heart, as a point for direct aim; and whoever kills the other is to have the privilege of cutting off his head, and sticking it up on a pole on the piece of land that was the origin of the debate; so that, some fine day, I might have come hither as I did today, and found myself riding under the shadow of the gory locks of Dr. H[azzard] or Mr. W[ylly], my peaceful and pleasant neighbors. . . ."

Source: John A. Scott (ed.), Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Anne Kemble (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), p. 292.

1862 From Columbus, planter and businessman John Banks had gone four months without making any entries in his diary. With some pessimism, he now wrote:

"I have neglected to record the war news. We have had many successes and reverses since I last made any remarks, but most against us. I plant no cotton this year, and quite a disposition with many to do likewise."

Source: John Banks, Autobiography of John Banks, 1797 - 1870 (Austell, Ga.: privately printed by Elberta Leonard, 1936), p. 25.

1865 During the closing days of the Civil War, April Fool's Day could still be time for levity, as evidenced by this day's journal entry for 24-year-old Eliza Frances Andrews, who was visiting her older sister near Albany:

"There was fooling and counter fooling between Pine Bluff and Gum Pond all day. Jim Chiles and Albert Bacon began it by sending us a beautiful bouquet over which they had sprinkled snuff. We returned the box that had held the flowers, filled with dead rats dressed up in capes and mob caps like little old women. Then Albert tried to frighten us by sending a panicky note saying a dispatch had just been received from Thomasville that the Yankees were devastating the country round there, and heading for Andersonville. We pretended to believe it, and sister wrote back as if in great alarm, inquiring further particulars. Albert got his father to answer with a made-up story that he and Wallace had both gone to help fight the raiders at Thomasville. They must have thought us fools indeed, to believe that the enemy could come all the way from Tallahassee or Savannah to Thomasville, without our hearing a word of it till they got there, but we pretended to swallow it all, and got sister to write back that Metta and I were packing our trunks and would leave for Albany immediately, so as to take the first train for Macon; and to give color to the story, she sent word for Tommy, who was spending the day with Loring Bacon, to come home and tell his aunties good-by. They were caught with their own bait, and Albert and Jimmy, fearing they had carried the joke too far, came galloping over at full speed to prevent our setting out. We saw them coming across the field, and Mett and I hid ourselves, while sister met them with a doleful countenance, pretending that we had already gone and that she was frightened out of her wits. She had rubbed her eyes to make them look as if she had been crying, and the children and servants, too, had been instructed to pretend to be in a great flurry. When the jokers confessed their trick, she pretended to be so hurt and angry that they were in dismay, thinking they had really driven us off, though all the while we were locked in our own room, peeping through the cracks, listening to it all, and ready to burst with laughter. They had mounted their horses and declared that they would go after us and fetch us back, if they had to ride all the way to Albany, when old Uncle Setley spoiled our whole plot by laughing and yawping so that he excited their suspicion. They got down from their horses and began to look for wheel tracks on the ground, and at last Jim, who missed his calling in not being a detective, went and peeped into the carriage-house and saw the carriage standing there in its place. This convinced them that we had not gone to Albany, but where were we? Then began the most exciting game of hide-and-seek I ever played. Such a jumping in and out of windows, crawling under beds and sliding into corners, was never done before. The children and servants, all but old fool Setley, acted their parts well, but Jimmy was not to be foiled. They bid sister good-by several times and rode away as if they were going home, then suddenly returned in the hope of taking us by surprise. At last, after dark, we thought they were off for good, and went in to supper, taking the precaution, however, to bar the front door and draw the dining-room curtains. But we had had hardly begun to eat when Jimmy burst into the room, exclaiming:

"Howdy do, Miss Fanny; you made a short trip to Albany."

We all jumped up from the table and began to bombard him with hot biscuits and muffins, and whatever else we could lay hands on. Then Mr. Bacon came in, a truce was declared, and we sat down and ate supper -- or what was left of it -- together. After supper we made Uncle Aby hitch up the carriage and drive us over to Gum Pond to surprise the family there. I dressed myself up like an old cracker woman and went in and asked for a night's lodging. Maj. Bacon thought I was Leila trying to play a trick on him, so he dragged me very unceremoniously into the middle of the room, under the lamp, and pulled my bonnet off. It was funny to see his embarrassment when he saw his mistake; he is so awfully punctilious. He said he was in the act of writing a note to send after us to Albany, when I came in. They were all so delighted at finding they had not frightened us out of the country, that we had a grand jubilee together.

"We counted up before returning home, and found that forty-four miles had been ridden back and forth during the day on account of this silly April-fooling. I don't think I ever enjoyed a day more in my life. It began happily, too, with Anderson's return from jail early in the morning, and peace-making with his "missis." [Anderson was a young slave owned by her sister who had been turned over to the sheriff for repeatedly running away.]I expect we were all as glad of the poor darkey's release as he was himself. Mett says she wouldn't care much if they could all be set free -- but what on earth could we do with them, even if we wanted to free them ourselves? And to have a gang of meddlesome Yankees come down here and take them away from us by force -- I would never submit to that, not even if slavery were as bad as they pretend. I think the best thing to do, if the Confederacy were to gain its independence, would be to make a law confiscating the negroes of any man who was cruel to them, and allowing them to choose their own master. Of course they would choose the good men, and this would make it to everybody's interest to treat them properly."

Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), pp. 124-127.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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