Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

January 1

1751 Although some Georgia colonists had been violating the 1735 law prohibiting slavery since the mid-1740s, the Trustees finally repealed that law in 1750. That repeal became effective Jan. 1, 1751, which marks the official date that slavery became legal in Georgia.

1856 Lawyer and well-known Georgia politician John Macpherson Berrien died in Savannah. He was born on Aug. 23, 1781 in Princeton, New Jersey. Two years later, his parents moved to Savannah, where at age 18 he began the practice of law. In 1822, Berrien served a term in the Georgia Senate, and in 1824 the General Assembly elected him to serve in the U.S. Senate. In 1829, Berrien resigned to serve as Pres. Andrew Jackson's attorney general. In 1831, he returned to practice law in Savannah, where he helped form the Georgia State Rights party. In 1840, Berrien was reelected to the Georgia Senate, where he served for the next 12 years. Afterwards, he practiced law in Savannah until his death on Jan. 1 1856. The next month, the General Assembly created a new county and named it in his honor.

1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation [text]. In Sept. 1862, he had issued a preliminary version announcing that on Jan. 1, 1863, he would issue a declaration as to which states were in rebellion against the United States. At that time, slaves in those states -- and only those states -- would be freed. In Lincoln's Jan. 1 proclamation, he announced that all eleven southern states that had joined the Confederacy were in rebellion -- though designated areas of Louisiana and Virginia were exempted from emancipation. [For a brief history of the Emancipation Proclamation, click here.]

1897 Atlanta University and Tuskegee Institute played the first black collegiate football game. The game, played in Atlanta, was won by Atlanta University.

1929 In its only Rose Bowl appearance, Georgia Tech defeated California 8-7. In the game, California player Roy Riegels ran 69 yards the wrong way after recovering a fumble in the Rose Bowl against George Tech.

1932 Campbell and Milton counties officially merged with Fulton County, thus reducing the number of Georgia counties from 161 to 159. Later, the Constitution of 1945 would mandate a maximum limit of 159 counties, though allowing the General Assembly to provide for consolidation of two or more counties subject to approval by voters of the affected counties.

1940 In its first Orange Bowl appearance, Georgia Tech defeated Missouri 21-7.

1942 Athlete Billy Lothridge was born. As a member of the Georgia Tech football team, he was runner-up to Roger Staubach for the 1963 Heisman Trophy. Lothridge later played professional football for the Miami Dolphins.

1942 Georgia beat Texas Christian 40-26 in its first Orange Bowl appearance.

1943 Frank Sinkwich led Georgia to a 9-0 victory over UCLA in the Bulldog's first and only Rose Bowl game.

1943 Georgia Tech lost to Texas 14-7 in its first Cotton Bowl appearance.

1944 Georgia Tech beat Tulsa 20-18 in its first Sugar Bowl game.

1946 Georgia beat Tulsa 20-6 in the Oil Bowl.

1947 Georgia beat North Carolina 20-10 in the Sugar Bowl.

1947 Georgia Tech beat St. Mary's 41-19 in the Oil Bowl.

1948 Georgia Tech beat Kansas 20-14 in the Orange Bowl.

1949 Texas beat Georgia 41-28 in the Orange Bowl.

1952 Georgia Tech beat Baylor 17-14 in the Orange Bowl.

1953 Georgia Tech beat Mississippi 24-7 in the Sugar Bowl.

1954 Georgia Tech beat West Virginia 42-19 in the Sugar Bowl

1955 Georgia Tech beat Arkansas 14-6 in the Cotton Bowl.

1956 Georgia Tech beat Pittsburgh 7-0 in the Sugar Bowl.

1960 Georgia beat Missouri 14-0 in the Orange Bowl.

1967 Georgia beat SMU 24-9 in the Cotton Bowl.

1969 Arkansas beat Georgia 16-2 in the Sugar Bowl.

1976 Arkansas beat Georgia 31-10 in the Cotton Bowl.

1977 Pittsburgh beat Georgia 27-3 in the Sugar Bowl.

1981 Undefeated Georgia beat Notre Dame 17-10 in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship.

1982 In the Sugar Bowl, Pittsburgh beat Georgia by the score of 24-20.

1983 In the Sugar Bowl, Penn State beat Georgia by a score of 27-23.

1989 Georgia beat Michigan State 34-27 in the Gator Bowl.

1991 Georgia Tech beat Nebraska 45-21 in the Gator Bowl, earning Tech the UPI coaches' national collegiate championship for 1990.

1993 Georgia beat Ohio State 21-14 in the Citrus Bowl.

1998 Georgia beat Wisconsin 33-6 in the Outback Bowl, in the process establishing two new and tying one Outback records. [Click here for a summary of the game.]

1999 Georgia Tech beat Notre Dame 35-28 in the Gator Bowl. While Tech lead for most of the game, Notre Dame battled back in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 28-28. Late in the game, Tech scored the game-winning touchdown. [Click here for a summary of the game.]

2000 Georgia and Georgia Tech spent the first day of the new century and millennium playing bowl games in Florida. In Tampa, the Bulldogs played Purdue in the Outback Bowl. In the first half, Purdue jumped to a 25-0 lead, but the Bulldogs came back to score 28 unanswered points, winning 28-25 in overtime. Across state at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Tech took on Miami. Unfortunately for Tech, there was no miracle comeback, with Miami winning 28-13.

2003 The University of Georgia Bulldogs completed their best season in twenty years by defeating the Florida State Seminoles 26-13 in the Sugar Bowl. Georgia coach Mark Richt was facing the team he had coached for previously before taking the reigns at UGA in 2000. The victory capped off a championship season for the Bulldogs, as they won the Southeastern Conference title to advance to the Sugar Bowl. Georgia running back Musa Smith was named the game's Most Valuable Player. [Click here for a summary of the game.]
 
 2004 It was almost Jan. 1, 2000 -- but this time in reverse. Playing against Purdue in the Capitol One Bowl in Orlando, Georgia jumped out to a 24-0 lead in the second quarter. Four years earlier, Purdue had jumped to a 25-0 halftime lead over Georgia--but in that game Georgia pulled off the biggest bowl comeback in history. In 2004, Perdue tried the same thing, with the game ending in a 27-27 tie. In overtime, Georgia scored a touchdown. Purdue then took possession -- but could not match the score, and the game ended with a 34-27 victory for Georgia. One bit of football history was made when Georgia place kicker Billy Bennett hit two field goals and four extra points to give him 409 career points -- a new NCAA collegiate scoring record.

2008 The University of Georgia defeated Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Hawaii came into the game as the nation's only undefeated team, with a vaunted offense averaging over 46 points per game. But Georgia turned in a masterful defensive performance in holding Hawaii to only ten points, the only touchdown being scored well after the game was decided. The Georgia offense was impressive as well, scoring 34 points, with the defense adding a score of their own, making the final score 41-10. Georgia defensive end Marcus Howard was named the game's Most Valuable Player.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1735 Georgia's early colonists were given a town lot in Savannah to build a house, a 5-acre lot at the edge of town for a garden, and then 45 acres in the countryside for a farm. However, the quality of land varied widely, some proving unsuitable for raising crops, as evidenced by the letter from Arthur Johnson to the Trustees:

". . . Mr. Oglethorpe . . . granted me a lot in town, upon which with great difficulty I have built a house, much larger than what is common and sunk a well 35 foot, together with all other necessary improvements.

"My five-acre lot is of no service to me, being one entire swamp, nor am I capable of improving it for want of servants. My 45-acre lot is far distant from town, and having no assistance can make little or no improvement thereon, which is cause of great trouble to me, having been from my youth a planter.

" 'Tis impossible for a town to subsist without a country[side]. So [I] would willing (as my genius lies chiefly in tillage) sell my house in town, had I three or four servants, and apply myself thereto . . . .

" 'Tis impossible for me to maintain my family without servants . . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. I, pp. 83-84.

1817 Many proponents of slavery in Georgia were uncomfortable with the presence of free blacks in the state. And in some cases, as evidenced in this editorial in Milledgeville's Georgia Journal, the feeling was outright opposition:

"To the nation at large, the slave holding states in particular, this subject [colonizing free blacks in Africa] is full of interest. The practicability of colonizing the blacks has been demonstrated at Sierra Leone, where thousands are said to be cultivating the soil, and civilizing the barbarous hordes that surround them. Nor will the policy if such a measure be questioned by anyone who duly estimates the danger to which our tranquility is constantly exposed by having among us a race of people, possessing neither the rights of citizens nor the protection of slaves. With the example of St. Domingo before our eyes, it is strange we should have permitted partial freedom to exist so long, especially when it is known to have the effect of making slaves discontented with their situation, and exciting them to insurrection. . . ."

Source: Spencer B. King, Jr., Georgia Voices: A Documentary History to 1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974 reprint of 1966 original volume), p. 201.

1864 In Convington, Ga., Dolly Sumner Lunt recorded the first entry in her Civil War diary:

"A new year is ushered in, but peace comes not with it. Scarcely a family but has given some of its members to the bloody war that is still decimating our nation. Oh, that its ravages may soon be stopped! Will another year find us among carnage and bloodshed? Shall we be a nation or shall we be annihilated? . . . The prices of everything are very high. Corn seven dollars a bushel, calico ten dollars a yard, salt, sixty dollars a hundred, cotton from sixty to eighty cents a pound, everything in like ratio."

Source: Dolly Sumner Lunt, A Woman's Wartime Journal (New York: The Century Co., 1918), p. 3.

1865 In Savannah, Gen. Sherman prepared an official report outlining his strategy and the outcome of his March to the Sea. Included in his report was the following estimate the value of property destroyed in Georgia during the campaign:

"I was thereby left with a well-appointed army to sever the enemy's only remaining railroad communications eastward and westward, for over 100 miles -- namely, the Georgia State Railroad, which is broken up from Fairburn Station to Madison and the Oconee, and the Central Railroad, from Gordon clear to Savannah, with numerous breaks on the latter road from Gordon to Eatonton and from Millen to Augusta, and the Savannah Gulf Railroad. We have also consumed the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah, as also the sweet potatoes, cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry, and have carried away more than 10,000 horses and mules, as well as a countless number of their slaves. I estimate the damage done to the State of Georgia and its military resources at $100,000,000; at least $20,000,000 of which has inured to our advantage, and the remainder is simple waste and destruction. This may seem a hard species of warfare, but it brings the sad realities of war home to those who have been directly or indirectly instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities."

Source: U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1893, reprinted by The National Historical
Society, 1971), Series I, Vol. XLIV, p. 13.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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