Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

January 8

1734 The Purrysburg sailed from Dover, England carrying 73 new Georgia colonists. Of the group, most were German Lutherans who had fled persecution in the Catholic region of Salzburg, which was located between Bavaria and upper Austria. This was the first of three shiploads of Salzburgers that would settle in Georgia.

1783 Georgia signer of the Declaration of Independence Lyman Hall was elected governor. Born Apr. 12, 1724 in Wallingford, Conn., he received a college education and learned the practice of medicine. In 1752, he moved first to South Carolina and then to Sunbury, Georgia. By the 1770s, Hall was part of the revolutionary movement in Georgia, serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress.After the Revolution, he served as governor (1783-84) and later as a judge. In 1790, Hall bought a plantation in Burke County, where he died on Oct.17, 1790. In Dec. 1818, the General Assembly created a new county that was named in his honor. In 1848, the city of Augusta built a 50-foot-tall Signers Monument in the middle of Greene St. and moved the remains of Hall and George Walton to the site.

1807 Jurist and politician David Irwin was born in Wilkes County, Georgia. Early in life Irwin became noted for his penmanship, which helped earn him a position as a superior court clerk. Becoming interested in the law, he studied and was admitted to the Georgia bar at age twenty. Though he served several terms in the state legislature and at two constitutional conventions, Irwin is most noted for his significant contributions to the codifying of Georgia law. Irwin, Thomas R.R. Cobb, and Richard H. Clark were chosen to incorporate all common law, statutes, and judicial decisions into a single unified code of law in 1858. The code had to be revised in 1861, 1868, and 1873 -- with virtually all the revision work being done by Irwin; the revised versions were popularly know as "Irwin's Code." In addition to his political and judicial work, Irwin remained an active participant in the civic affairs of the state -- working to improve state railroads and serving on a local board of education. He died in Marietta on Nov. 26, 1885.

1821 Military leader James Longstreet was born in the Edgefield District in South Carolina (an area near present-day North Augusta) while his mother was visiting her husband's parents. Shortly after his birth, they returned to the family farm near present-day Cleveland,Georgia. Here he lived until he was nine, when he moved to Augusta to live with his grandfather Augustus B. Longstreet. Longstreet attended West Point, where he roomed with future Civil War generals William Rosecrans, John Pope, and A.P. Stewart. After graduating from West Point, Longstreet served in the Mexican War and eventually was promoted to major in the U.S. Army. After the secession of southern states in 1861, Longstreet resigned his commission and offered his services to the Confederacy. Initially, he was appointed colonel of an infantry unit, but soon he was promoted to brigadier general. Longstreet distinguished himself in the battles of First Manassas (Bull Run) and Seven Days, and he soon was Lee's most respected subordinate.

Longstreet's reputation would be later tarnished -- many authorities would say unfairly -- by the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. [After the war, Jubal Early charged that Longstreet's delay in getting his troops into position was responsible for the devastating Confederate defeat -- something Longstreet vigorously denied long after the war was over.] Later that year, Longstreet was the catalyst in the Confederate victory at Chickamauga, when he led his troops on a charge through an opening in the federal line, thus routing a major portion of the Union Army. Soon Longstreet was back in Virginia with Lee, where he stayed until the final surrender at Appomattox. After the war Longstreet returned to Gainesville. He ran an insurance company and then became a cotton merchant in New Orleans. When he joined the Republican Party, many of his fellow southerners turned against him. Thereafter, he took a number of jobs with the federal government, including serving as U.S. Minister to Turkey, U.S. marshal for Georgia, and a U.S. railroad commissioner. In June 1881, Longstreet returned to Gainesville, Ga. where he spent the rest of his life. served in a number of different politically appointed positions. Here he penned the autobiographical From Manassas to Appomattox and contributed much of the information that his wife, Helen Dortch Longstreet, used in her book, Lee and Longstreet at High Tide. He died in Gainesville January 2, 1904.

1821 Meeting at Chief William McIntosh's settlement at Indian Springs, Creek and U.S. representatives signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, in which the Creeks ceded their lands between the Ocmulgee and Flint rivers. For the first time, Georgia's boundaries extended westward beyond the Ocmulgee River.

1825 Inventor Eli Whitney died in New Haven, Conn. [See Dec. 8 entry for biographical information]

1827 James Holt Clanton was born in Columbia County, Ga. He became a lawyer and fought in the Mexican War. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Clanton became a colonel in the 1st Alabama Cavalry and fought in the Battle of Shiloh. He fought in the Atlanta Campaign and in Nov. 1863 was promoted to brigadier general. After the war, he returned to the practice of law. He was killed in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sept. 27, 1871 -- apparently by a former Union officer who was drunk.

1831 John Pemberton, who developed the formula for Coca-Cola, was born in Knoxville, Georgia.

1942 One month and one day from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the first buildings of the new Georgia Air Depot were completed. Located on a former dairy farm in Wellston, Ga., these were used as headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers, which was building a new base for the Army Air Corps. Later, facility would become Warner Robins Air Force Base [click here for history of WRAFB].

1955 Georgia Tech ended the University of Kentucky's record of 130 consecutive home basketball wins.

1961 Gov. Ernest Vandiver called a special meeting of the State Board of Regents, University of Georgia president O.C. Aderhold, and other state officials. They met at the governor's mansion to discuss the federal court order directing immediate desegregation of the University. They also debated where to house Charlayne Hunter and decided to place her alone in a Myers Hall dorm room.

1977 Georgia senators Sam Nunn and Herman Talmadge were among the dignitaries attending the debut of the prototype of the YC-141B Stretched Starlighter at Lockheed-Georgia's Marietta facilities.

2007 Athens band R.E.M. was selected fro induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1850 The future of slavery in the western territories of the U.S. was an issue that bitterly divided the North and South. As war with Mexico appeared imminent, Congressman David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, successfully got a proviso attached to an appropriation bill providing that slavery would not be allowed in any land acquired from Mexico. The "Wilmot Proviso" passed the House but not the Senate. By 1850, southern Democrats were united in their opposition to reintroduction of the proviso in Congress. In fact, a group of citizens in Washington County, Ga., met on Jan. 8, 1850 and adopted the following resolution:

"That we regard the Wilmont [sic] Proviso as wholly unconstitutional in principle, aggressive in its aim and directly insulting to the South; and rather than submit to its application to any territory now acquired or hereafter to be acquired south of the Missouri Compromise [line], we are for immediate dissolution of the Union."

Source: Milledgeville Southern Recorder, Jan. 15, 1850, as cited in Spencer B. King, Jr., Georgia Voices: A Documentary History to 1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974 reprint of 1966 original volume), p. 260.

1857 From Charleston, S.C., planter Charles Manigault wrote to his brother Louis Manigault, who managed two family plantations near Savannah, with advice on purchasing slaves:

"I went yesterday to see Carson's Negroes. They are indeed a most inferior gang, more than half old and scarcely a single prime field hand, so that I would not event attend the sale this morning. When one buys 15 or 20 Negroes, it is of great importance as possible to select them all from one gang. They then, in a strange place, have ties to bind them all together. But when you buy several small parcels and throw them all together among strangers, they don't assimilate and they ponder over former ties of family, &c. and all goes wrong with them."

Mills Lane (ed.), Neither More Nor Less Than Men: Slavery in Georgia (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1993), p. 129.

1865 Many Georgia soldiers lost limbs or were otherwise disabled during the Civil War. While most had families that could help out on their return, some soldiers had no source of income or place to live. One of these was G.M. Sumner, a member of the 45th Georgia Infantry. On this day, from Henderson, Sumner wrote Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown of his plight:

"I embrace this opportunity of writing a few lines to you as I [explain the] misery in my present condition. On the 4th day of March 1862, you called on Georgia for volunteers to go to the field of battle, and, as I thought my services was needed in the field and every other man's that was able to bear arms, I volunteered and soon was sent to Virginia. [I] went through all of the battles with the 45th Georgia without ever receiving a furlough until the 5th day of May, 1864. I was wounded in the left arm, caused me to lose the use of it entirely. On the 6th day of June, I received a furlough at the hospital in Richmond and came to Georgia. Being without family or parents, I was compelled to pay board. On the 1st of October I went back to Virginia. [I] had paid out all the money I had and left me $100 in debt to pay when I could. On the 2nd day of November, I was retired and made my way back to Georgia.

". . . Last week, the 1st of January, I went to Macon to draw my pay and some clothing but clothing was refuse[d] to let me have. They was due me for clothing last year $49. They refuse[d] to pay that and also my computations for rations. They paid me $36 wages and this I was compelled to pay out for a pair of shoes, for I was barefooted and clothes I am without and have not the means to buy with. When I cannot get the money that is due me from the government and if I had it all it would not buy clothing at the present prices.

"I wish to ask you what is to become of such men as I that is disabled and cannot get what is due them from the government. I cannot work for a living with one hand. Times is so no one won't hire a overseer. And I wish to know what I am to do, if I can look to Georgia for help or have I got to turn out in the world. These times are [hard], after fighting in this cruel war until I was ruined for life, when I had nothing in the world to fight for but myself, without parents or relation or property of any kind, though I considered it my duty to fight for the country, and I did so until I was disabled. Since that time it looks like the world has forsaken me and cares not for a man no longer than he is able for the battlefield. . . .I hope you will adopt some plan that I may draw [w]hat is due me or some plan that I may get some clothing without turning out in the world a beggar or being sent to the poor house. I will close, hoping that you will consider my condition and let me hear from you soon."

Source: Mills Lane, Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 179-180.

1870 Five years after the Civil War, Atlanta merchant Samuel P. Richards recorded in his diary a popular form of entertainment among young people -- one that survives to this day:

"Tonight Sallie and Dora & Irene went with me to the Skating Rink to see what has created such an excitement among the young folks. We found the large hall that erst was used for the Great Baptist Fair fairly alive with skaters, boys and girls, young men and young women whirling and gliding to and fro with infinite zest and energy. 'Roller Skating' would seem to be pretty good substitute for the thing on ice. Dora and Rene were very anxious to skate if they only knew how."

Source, Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969 reprint of 1954 original volume), Vol. I, p. 841.

1871 In Richmond County, the financial and emotional problems which beset Gertrude Thomas and her husband in the years during and after Reconstruction sometime shook her very strong faith to its foundations:

". . . I have been thinking this morning of the wild tumult in my head the other day, when through my mind there came a doubt if Julian [her youngest son, sick with a fever] would live. Mr. Thomas appeared to think him very ill and said so. I did not rise from my seat, and I know my husband thought I was a careless mother as he busied himself in preparing some medicine. I did not pray, but into my heart there came a wild longing to wrestle with the grim angel Ayreal for the life of my baby. It was not until he called me that I went to the bed and lay down by him. 'Mr. Thomas,' said I, 'if God takes my baby from me I do not know what I will do.' He did not understand me. I lay down by Julian and taking his hand in mine I felt how entirely helpless, how utterly impotent I was to help him from drifting from me, and unconsciously with my thought I tightened the clasp upon his little hand. It was not long but it seemed an age that this defiant spirit continued, and then my over burdened heart was relieved by tears. Julian is better, much better. He has had no fever yesterday or today and I am grateful, truly grateful but in my own consciousness I realise that I was not willing to say, 'Thy will be done' had that will required my baby, my darling to be taken from me."

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), pp. 360.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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