Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

December 20

1804 Minister and planter Charles Colcock Jones Sr. was born on Liberty Hall Plantation in Liberty County, Georgia. Jones early on showed enthusiasm for the church, though he was apprenticed to a counting house at age fourteen. But illness forced him away from the business, thus allowing him to pursue religious studies -- which he did at Andover Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary. While studying in the North, he was influenced by temperance movement and reform agencies of his day. He returned home determined to be a minister to the slaves of his native South. This he did for most of the remainder of his life, though his reform mindedness did not extend to a belief in abolition. While being a highly successful planter himself, Jones worked for a benevolent society of slaves and masters, believing each had his proper place in society. He wrote a number of tracts on instruction of and ministering to blacks. Unfortunately for him, the "benevolent" society of which he dreamed was shattered in his final years. He died in 1863 -- just as his dream of a peaceful Christian society of slaves and masters was dying on Civil War battlefields. Jones was buried in Midway Cemetery.

1828 Gov. John Forsyth signed legislation creating Randolph and Campbell counties as Georgia's 75 and 76th counties. Randolph County, created from portions of Lee County, was named for John Randolph of Virginia. Campbell County--created from portions of Carroll, Coweta, DeKalb, and Fayette counties--was named for Duncan Campbell, who was an early proponent of female education in Georgia. Later, Campbell County merged with Fulton County by an act of Aug. 9, 1929 that became effective Jan. 1, 1932.

1833 Gov. Wilson Lumpkin signed an act incorporating the Central Railroad and Canal Co. of Georgia with authority to run a rail line from Savannah to the interior of the state -- principally Macon.

1851 Gov. Howell Cobb signed legislation creating Polk and Spalding counties as Georgia's 96th and 97th counties. Polk County, created from portions of Floyd and Paulding counties, was named for former president James Polk. Spalding County -- created from portions of Fayette, Henry, and Pike counties -- was named for early Georgia planter and state legislator Thomas Spalding.

1853 Gov. Herschel Johnson signed legislation creating Fulton and Worth counties as Georgia's 105th and 106th counties. Fulton County, created from portions of DeKalb County, was named for Robert Fulton. Worth County, created from portions of Dooly and Irwin counties, was named for Maj. Gen. William Worth. During the Mexican War, William Harris -- who helped organized the county -- had served in Worth's command.

1860 In Charleston, a secession convention passed an Ordinance of Secession, making South Carolina the first state ever to secede from the Union and setting the stage for Georgia and other southern states to consider their fate in upcoming secession conventions.

1864 During the night, Savannah's Confederate defenders retreated over a pontoon bridge. The Dec. 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly contained an engraving showing the retreat.

1893 Gov. William Northen approved a law making "mobbing or lynching" a felony crime subject to imprisonment for one to twenty years. Should death occur from "mob violence," the person or persons causing such death were to be tried and subject to penalties under state law for murder. The law also placed on peace officers the specific duty to stop mob violence, and if necessary to summon citizens of the community to help by using "every means in their power to prevent such mob violence." Failure to act by a peace officer or by a citizen summoned to help was declared a misdemeanor offense. Northen had pushed the bill through the General Assembly, though its passage did little or nothing to stop the lynching of blacks.

1899 Gov. Allen Candler approved a law requiring sleeping car and railroad companies operating sleeping car in Georgia to provide segregated compartments, except in the case of a black nurse or servant traveling with their employer. Conductors and other railroad employees were given "full police power" to enforce this requirement.

1969 Nebraska beat Georgia 45-6 in the Sun Bowl.

1994 Dean Rusk died in Athens at age 85 of congestive heart failure. He was born David Dean Rusk on Feb. 9, 1909 in Cherokee County, Ga. He obtained an undergraduate degree from Davidson College (N.C.) in 1931, and then received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend St. John's College at Oxford, where he was awarded a M.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics. Returning to the U.S., Rusk taught at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. from 1934 to 1940, when he joined the U.S. Army. During World War II, Rusk served as deputy chief of staff for Army operations in the China-Burma-India theater of war and rose to the rank of colonel. In 1946, Rusk joined the State Department, where he held the post of Assistant or Deputy Under Secretary of State from 1947 to 1952. He left the State Department in 1952 to serve as chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation.

In late 1960, Rusk received a call from newly elected president John F. Kennedy asking him to serve as Secretary of State. Rusk was a key advisor to Kennedy during failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the building of the Berline Wall, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy's assassination, Pres. Lyndon Johnson asked Rusk to continue as Secretary of State. Rusk believed strongly that it was in the U.S.'s vital interests to prevent the spread of communism. Particularly was this true in Southeast Asia, where communist North Vietnam was supporting the overthrow of the Saigon regime in South Vietnam. At first, U.S. assistance U.S. assistance took the form of military supplies, equipment, advisors, and economic resources, but soon U.S. air power and ground troops were also involved. Rusk's policy of unyielding support for South Vietnam led to him to later admit that he had erred in underestimating both the resolve of North Vietnam to continue the war and the extent of opposition to the war in the U.S.

In 1970, Rusk accepted a position at the University of Georgia as Samuel H. Sibley Professor of International Law at the University of Georgia (1970-1994). Here he taught international law and headed the Dean Rusk Center until his retirement in 1984.

1998 Playing in Detroit, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Lions by a score of 24-17. The win pushed the Falcons to 13-2 for the season -- a new record for best start in franchise history. The win also set a new Falcons' record for most wins in a regular season. The win also was the eighth in a row, setting a new franchise record.

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved on Dec. 20:

1860 Tallapoosa (Haralson County)

1866 McIntosh (Butts County) and Statesboro (Bulloch County)

1892 Carlton (Madison County), Statham (Jackson County), and Nashville (Berrien County)

1893 Ailey (Montgomery County), Bolton (Fulton County), Bullochville (Meriwether County), Cubana (Thomas County), and Locust Grove (Henry County)

Other changes affecting cities and towns approved on Dec. 20:

1893 Jug Tavern (Barrow County) was renamed Winder

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1738 In London, the Georgia Trustees acted on George Whitefield's list of conditions for returning to Georgia as Anglican minister, as recorded in the diary of the Earl of Egmont:

". . . A proposal containing sundry propositions made to the Trustees by Mr. Whitfeild for advancing the religious concerns of the Colony was read, and in the main agreed to. We also agreed to give him, as he desired, a commission to collect money for building a church for the Saltsburgers at Ebenezer.

Source: U.K. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1923), Vol. II, p. 513.

1833 Life in Georgia's interior could be very primitive, as Mrs. James Hine of New York found out during her trip through Georgia. From Dublin, she wrote her mother about her first night's experience after departing Savannah:

"I scarcely know where to begin -- so much that is new to me meets me at every step. We left Savannah on the 8th. When we got to Norwood's, where we were to spend the first night, evening was closing in around us. The house was of logs, a single story in height, presenting but one window and one door . . . . I supposed the building to be the barn . . . .What was my astonishment upon finding that it was the dwelling -- the house of the family with whom we were to stay! . . .

"After the supper was finished I sought quarters for the night, and they showed me into the little room on the end of the piazza. It was barely large enough to hold a small bedstead and have a space of about two feet on one side of it. There was no space for the door to open; it had to open outside. There was no article of furniture in the room but the bedstead and one chair, not even a table to hold a light; . . . . the bedstead was a rough specimen of home manufacture, and the bed, professedly of feathers, though there were not enough feathers in it to have made a decent pair of pillows . . . . There was no mattress, but a dried cowhide laid upon the cords to prevent what feathers there were in the bed from sinking down between them. . . . I felt very much as if I had got on the extreme border of civilization but one remove from savage life. I have read much of frontier life, but I never pictured to myself anything so wild as this. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 86-87.

1864 General Sherman was aware of the pontoon bridges General Hardee had built across the Savannah River (see Dec. 19 entry). To alleviate his concern that Hardee might use other pontoons to secretly move out and isolate a portion of his widely scattered army, he called on Admiral Dahlgren to escort him around the city by boat to view the fortifications. Upon this trip they had a small misadventure, as Sherman recalled in his memoirs:

"During the night of the 20th we started back, the wind blowing strong, Admiral Dahlgren ordered the pilot of the Harvest Moon to run into Tybee and to work his way through to Wassaw Sound and the Ogeechee River by the Romney Marshes. We were caught by a low tide and stuck in the mud. After laboring some time, the admiral ordered out his barge; in it we pulled through this intricate and shallow channel . . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Marching Through Georgia: William T. Sherman's Personal Narrative of His March Through Georgia (New York: Arno Press, 1978), p.177.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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