Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

December 9

1822 Gov. John Clark signed legislation creating DeKalb, Bibb, Pike, and Crawford as Georgia's 54th, 55th, 56th, and 57th counties. DeKalb County, created from portions of Fayette and Gwinnett counties, was named for Baron Johann DeKalb, who served as a major general in the Continental Army and was wounded in the Battle of Camden, South Carolina. Bibb County -- created from portions of Houston, Jones, Monroe, and Twiggs counties -- was named for Georgia-born Dr. William Bibb, who was the first elected governor of Alabama. Pike County, created from portions of Monroe County, was named for Zebulon Pike -- an explorer (for whom Colorado's Pike's Peak was named) and brigadier general in the War of 1812 killed during the successful assault on British forces at Toronto. Crawford County, created from portions of Houston County, was named for Georgian William H. Crawford, who was serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury at the time.

1848 Author Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia. Harris lived with his mother, a servant, until age thirteen, when he moved to a plantation named Turnwold and began work as a printer's devil on the Countryman, a weekly published by Joseph Addison Turner. Soon Harris was writing articles for the newspaper. When the Countryman ceased publication, Harris took a position with the Macon Telegraph, then the Monroe Advertiser, and the Savannah Morning News. In 1876 an outbreak of yellow favor forced Harris to take his family and temporarily move to Atlanta.

But Atlanta was to become Harris's permanent home. He joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution, where he worked under Henry Grady. Harris wrote editorials on many subjects, but most popular were his works of fiction based on scenes he had seen and dialects he had heard while growing up in Eatonton and on the Turnwold plantation. Eventually these stories, told by the fictional Uncle Remus, were gathered and published in book form in 1880. Since then numerous editions and compilations of the Uncle Remus stories have been published. While they were always well accepted, the stories' popularity soared with the release of Walt Disney's film version -- "Song of the South" -- soon after World War II. After 25 years of service, Harris resigned from the Atlanta Constitution in 1900. He began editor of his own Uncle Remus Magazine in 1907. Harris died at his Atlanta home, known as the Wren's Nest, on July 2, 1908.

1865 Provisional governor James Johnson signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution--one of the conditions of Reconstruction.Three days earlier, the necessary three-fourths of the states had ratified the amendment, though formal proclamation of its adoption did not come from the U.S. Secretary of State until Dec. 18, 1865. In any event, for the first time in history, slavery was abolished throughout the United States.

1867 The convention that would draft Georgia's Constitution of 1868 assembled in Atlanta. Earlier -- on Sept. 19, 1867 -- Maj. Gen. John Pope (who commanded the Reconstruction military district which included Georgia) had ordered a statewide election on whether Georgia's Constitution of 1865 should be replaced. That election was held Oct. 29-31, and by a narrow margin (106,410 to 102,283) voters approved holding a constitutional convention. At the same election, delegates to the convention were chosen. [One account says there were 166 delegates, 33 of whom were African American, while another lists 37 blacks among the 169 delegates.] Subsequently, on Nov. 19, Gen. Pope ordered that the convention be held in Atlanta on Dec. 9, 1867.

1872 Lawyer and politician Thomas Hardwick was born in Thomasville, Ga. After graduating from Mercer (1892) and the University of Georgia Law School (1893), Hardwick began the practice of law in Sandersville. After serving as county prosecuting attorney, he won election to the Georgia house of Representatives in 1898. After four years in the state legislature, Hardwick successfully ran for Congress in 1902 on a platform of black disfranchisement. In Congress, he openly called for disfranchisement and even introduced a measure to repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments (which he felt had been adopted in an unconstitutional manner). In 1906, Hardwick was a leading supporter of black disfranchisement in Georgia, and he helped draft the constitutional amendment that established literacy, good character, and citizenship tests for voting in Georgia. In 1914, Hardwick was elected to the U.S Senate, where he served one term but was defeated in his race for reelection. In 1920, he was elected governor and had a surprisingly progressive term in which he opposed Klan violence and became an advocate for prison reform and the graduated income tax. When Tom Watson died in 1922, Hardwick appointed Rebecca Felton to Watson's Senate seat allowing her to become the first woman to hold office in the U.S. Senate. Hardwick's political career, however, was over, failing to win reelection as governor, a subsequent race for the U.S. Senate, and a final race for governor in 1932. He subsequently resumed the practice of law until his death Jan. 31, 1944 in Sandersville.

1948 The U.S. Post Office released a new 3-cent commemorative stamp honoring Joel Chandler Harris. First-day-of-issue ceremonies were held in Eatonton on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

1950 Texas A&M beat Georgia 40-20 in the Presidential Cup Bowl.

1992 After winning his first Cy Young Award, Chicago Cubs pitcher and free agent Greg Maddux signed with the Atlanta Braves.

1997 Former University of Georgia football coaching great Wally Butts was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in ceremonies in New York City. Butts, who died in 1973, coached at Georgia from 1939-1960, during which time he had a 140-89-9 record. He was the eighth UGA player or coach inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Bob McWhorter, Charley Tripi, Frank Sinkwich, Vernon "Catfish" Smith, Bill Hartman, Fran Tarkenton, and Vince Dooley.

2003 The Atlanta Falcons notified head coach Dan Reeves that he would be fired at the end of the 2003 season. Reeves, with one year left in his contract, then asked that he be relieved of his contract immediately--a request that was granted. Born in Rome, Ga., Reeves became Falcons head coach in 1997. At the time of his release, he was in his 23rd consecutive season as a head coach--the longest tenure of any active coach in the NFL.

Georgia cities and towns incorporated by acts approved on Dec. 9:

1859 Georgetown (Quitman County)

1862 Trion (Chattooga County)

1890 Cecil (Berrien County)

1893 St. Charles (Coweta County)

1898 Edgewood (DeKalb County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1738 Unhappy Georgia colonists regularly complained to the Trustees over policies prohibiting slaves, female inheritance, and free title to their land grants. Typical was this petition signed by 121 Savannah colonists on this day:

". . . None of all those who have planted their land have been able to raise sufficient produce to maintain their families in bread-kind only . . . . So that by the accumulated expenses every year of provisions, clothing and medicines &c. for themselves, families and servants, several have expended all their money, nay even run considerably in debt, and so been obliged to give off planting and making further improvements. And those who continue are daily exhausting more and more of their money and some daily increasing their debts without a possibility of being reimbursed according to the present constitution [charter].

". . .[T]imber is the only thing we have here which we might export, and, notwithstanding we are obliged to fell it in planting our land, yet we cannot manufacture it fit for a foreign market but at double the expense of other colonies. As for instance, [the people at] the River of May, which is but twenty miles from us, with allowance of Negroes, load vessels with that commodity at one-half the price that we can do. . . . It is very well known that Carolina can raise everything that this colony can and they, having their labour so much cheaper, will always ruin our market unless we are in some measure on a footing with them. . . . We do from a sincere and true regard to the welfare and in duty both to you and ourselves, beg leave to lay before your immediate consideration the two following chief causes of these our present misfortunes . . . .

"1st. The want of a true title or fee simple to our lands, which if granted would both occasion great number of new settlers to come amongst us and likewise encourage those who remain here cheerfully to proceed in making further improvements, as well to retrieve their sunk fortunes as to make provision for their posterity.

"2d. The want of the use of Negroes with proper limitations, which if granted would both induce great numbers of white people to come here and also render us capable to subsist ourselves by raising provisions upon our lands, until we could make some produce fit for export and in some measure to balance our importation. We are very sensible to the inconveniences and mischiefs that have already and do daily arise from an unlimited use of N egroes, but we are as sensible that these may be prevented by a due limitation, such as so many to each white man or so many to such a quantity of land . . . . By granting us, Gentlemen, these two particulars and such other privileges as His Majesty's most dutiful subjects in America enjoy, you will not only prevent our impending ruin . . . . But if by denying us these privileges, we ourselves and families are not only ruined, but even our posterity likewise, you will always be mentioned as the cause and authors of all their misfortunes and calamities which we hope will never happen. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. 2, pp. 373-375.

1864 In his memoirs General Sherman recounted the following incident:

"On the 8th [actually the 9th -- Sherman wrote his memoirs eleven years after the fact], as I rode along, I found the column turned out of the main road, marching through the fields. Close by, in the corner of a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg and told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off all the flesh from one of his legs. I saw the terrible wound, and made full inquiry into the facts. There had been no resistance at that point, nothing to give warning of danger, and the rebels had planted eight-inch shells in the road, with friction-matches to explode them by being trod on. This was not war, but murder, and it made me very angry. I immediately ordered a lot of rebel prisoners to be brought from the provost-guard, armed with picks and spades, and made them march in close order along the road, so as to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up. They begged hard, but I reiterated the order, and could hardly help laughing at their stepping so gingerly along the road, where it was supposed sunken torpedoes might explode at each step, but they found no other torpedoes till near Fort McAllister. . . , That night we reached Pooler's Station, eight miles from Savannah."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Marching Through Georgia: William T. Sherman's Personal Narrative of His March Through Georgia (New York: Arno Press, 1978), pp. 158-159.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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