Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

August 5

1774 In response to a call from Georgia patriots to meet in Savannah on August 10, Georgia royal governor James Wright issued a proclamation prohibiting any unlawful assembly to protest British policy. Wright further warned in his proclamation that "all assembling and meetings of the people which may tend to raise fears and jealousies in the minds of his Majesty's subjects, under pretence [sic] of consulting together for redress of public grievances, are unconstitutional, illegal, and punishable by law."

1870 Former Union general Ethan Allen Hitchcock died in Sparta, Ga. [See May 18 entry for biographical information on Hitchcock.]

1889 Noted poet and writer Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah. At age 11, his father killed his mother and then committed suicide, after which young Aiken went to live with a distant relative in Massachusetts. While attending Harvard, he met T.S. Eliot and other great writers. Here, he threw himself into poetry. In 1914, two years after graduation, Aiken's first collection of poetry was published. Other volumes followed, though he soon also began writing stories and novels. In 1930, he won a Putilizer Prize for his previous year's work, Selected Poems. In the following decades, he won numerous other awards and recognitions, and in 1973 Gov. Jimmy Carter designated him as Georgia's poet laureate. Shortly afterwards, on Aug. 17, 1973, Aiken died in Savannah. (To view web site on Aiken's life and works, click here.)

1900 James Augustine Healy, born in Jones County, GA in 1830 and who had become the nation's first African-American Roman Catholic bishop, died in Portland, Maine. See April 6 This Day in Georgia History for more biographical information.

1910 Legislation by the General Assembly making it a misdemeanor to bet on elections in Georgia was signed into law by Gov. Joseph M. Brown.

1913 This was the eighth day of the trial of Leo Frank. Jim Conley was cross-examined mercilessly by Frank's defense attorneys for seven hours. While Conley was confused on some minor details, and admitted lying to police originally, and to having been arrested numerous times, he still held to his story of the previous day. Defense attorney Luther Rosser was unable to break any of the main points of Conley's story. When the day ended Conley was still on the stand, while defense attorneys argued that his testimony of having been a lookout for Frank on earlier occasions should be stricken from the record as irrelevant to the case. Click here for a detailed accounting of the case.

1958 The Dahlonega caravan of seven covered wagons bearing 43 ounces of Dahlonega gold for use in covering the state capitol dome arrived in Roswell-Sandy Springs area, where they camped out for the night. [See photo]

1989 Vidalia-native and former Pittsburgh Steelers great Mel Blount was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Georgia cities and towns incorporated by acts approved on Aug. 5:

1913 Kramer (Wilcox County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1855 From Richmond County, Gertrude Thomas recorded her account of seeing one of Georgia's leading citizens:

"So long a time has passed since writing I am almost at a loss to remember events as they have occurred in succession...I have not had time to write an account of the principal event which has taken place in some time -- I have seen [Alexander] Stephens -- Long wished to see him and to hear him. Had heard him described as common looking even worse than ordinary but when he mounted the rostrum and I saw him for the first time! As his diminutive size and person bearing the stamp of a real 'Piney Woods Cracker' first dawned upon my sight, what a shock I received."

Source: Virginia Ingraham Burr (ed.), The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), p. 132.

1863 From Orange Courthouse, Va., Sidney Richardson wrote to his parents back in Georgia with a bleak outlook on the future of the Confederate cause:

"I hate to speak my opinion about this war, but I think we will have to give it up after [all] is done, unless we can get some foreign nation to help us, for they are getting a stronghold in every state we have got, and they have got so many more men than we have got. It looks like it does not do any good to whip them here in this state, and out West they are tearing everything to pieces we have got out there.I hate to hear General Bragg has had to fall back to Georgia, and about the next thing we know the Yankees will be coming up the Chattahoochee River. But I am willing to fight them as long as General Lee says fight. But I think we are ruined now without going any further with it. One thing convinced me: that is when we went into Maryland and Pennsylvania. The [low] price of everything showed they did not feel the effects of this war, and I saw a great many men that are fit for service. Pennsylvania is the only free state I ever was in, but there only a few Negroes there and it is [as] fine a country as I ever saw for living easy. As far [as] I am concerned, I wish every Negro in America were in Africa [and] there was no way to get on here. This war is hard to account for. . . ."

Mills Lane (ed.), "Dear Mother: Don't grieve about me. If I get killed, I'll only be dead.": Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), pp. 258-259.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, The University of Georgia

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