Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

January 29

1779 British forces under Lt.-Col. Archibald Campbell captured Augusta.

1820 King George III of Great Britain died. He had assumed the crown on the death of George II in 1760, and was the colony of Georgia's last monarch.

1845 Politician Charles Frederick Crisp was born in England on January 29, 1845 while his parents were there on a visit. His parents were both actors who toured the antebellum South and settled in Ellaville, Georgia. Crisp served briefly in the Confederate Army before being captured at Spottsylvania. After his release in 1865 he returned to Georgia and studied law, being admitted to the bar in 1866. In 1873 he was appointed solicitor-general of the Southwestern Judicial Circuit. In 1882, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1891 became Speaker of the House, serving until 1895 (when the Republicans reclaimed the House). After John B. Gordon resigned from the Senate in 1896, Crisp became the leading candidate to replace him. In poor health, he died in Atlanta on Oct. 23, 1896 before the General Assembly could vote on Gordon's replacement. In 1905, the General Assembly named a county in his honor.

1850 Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery which included the admission of California into the Union as a free state but also required free states to return escaped slaves and would allow the population of western territories to vote on whether to allow slavery when applying for statehood. In Georgia, some politicians talked of secession. But in Congress, Georgia senators Robert Toombs and Alexander Stephens and Speaker of the House Howell Cobb would support Clay's legislation. The result was passage of what became known as the Compromise of 1850.

1861 Georgia's secession convention meeting in Milledgeville adjourned with instructions to reconvene in Savannah on the call of the convention president. That convention would reassemble on March 7.

1878 Future Georgia politician and U.S. Senator Walter F. George was born in Webster County. He attended Mercer University, obtaining a B.S. degree (1900), a B.L. degree (1901), and an honorary LLD degree (1920). George began a successful law practice in Vienna in 1901. Later, he served as solicitor-general (1907-12) and judge (1912-16) for the Cordele superior court circuit. In 1916, he was elected to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and in 1917 to the Georgia Supreme Court. In 1922, he was elected to the U.S. Senate (replacing Rebecca Latimer Felton) to fill the unexpired term of Tom Watson.

In the Senate, George came to oppose much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, and in particular Roosevelt's effort to pack the Supreme Court with more favorable justices. With arrival of World War II, George became an important ally of the president. In 1941, he became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After the war, he was an important advocate Senate ratification of the U.N. Charter.

During his years in the Senate, George was an important figure. Reelected five times, he served as president of the Senate (1955-57) and was a sponsor of various acts related to vocational education. George was regularly consulted by Pres. Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles on American foreign policy. However, despite his influence in the Senate and with the Eisenhower Administration, George never developed a political machine back in Georgia. Thus, when former governor Herman Talmadge decided to challenge George for his Senate seat in 1956, George realized he had little chance against the Talmadge machine--so he withdrew from the primary race. In 1957, Eisenhower named George as a special presidential representative to NATO and one of his foreign policy advisors. At age 79, George died at his home in Vienna on Aug. 4, 1957.

In addition to being honored with a commemorative stamp issued on Nov. 5, 1960, George has been remembered in many ways. During his life, five law schools (Mercer, Emory, Brown, Columbia, and Union) bestowed honorary LLD degrees on him. In 1947, Mercer University renamed its law school as the Walter F. George Law School. The year after his death, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers named a new lake constructed on the Chattahoochee River in recognition of George's half century of public service. [Click here to view information on Lake Walter F. George.]

1892 The Coca-Cola Company was incorporated in Georgia by a charter granted by Fulton County Superior Court, with a capital stock offering of $100,000. Fewer than 500 shares, which had a par value of $100 each, were ever issued.

1899 Educator Harmon White Caldwell was born in Meriwether County, Georgia. Caldwell earned degrees from the University of Georgia and Harvard University before beginning his teaching career at Emory University. In 1933, after a brief stint practicing law, he was named dean of the Lumpkin Law School at the University of Georgia. Two years later, he became the youngest man up to that time to be named president of the university. Despite taking over amidst the Great Depression, Caldwell embarked on an era of expansion for the University. Seventeen new building were constructed, while a number of others were renovated and over one hundred new faculty members were added. In 1937 he convinced the Board of Regents to purchase the DeRenne collection, a wealth of information on the history of Georgia comprised of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and maps. In 1939 he oversaw the creation of the University of Georgia Press.

Caldwell also guided the university through one of its more difficult times -- the lost of accreditation in 1942 because of political interference by Governor Eugene Talmadge. In 1948 Caldwell was unanimously chosen to be chancellor of the University System of Georgia, a position for which he was re-elected annually until his retirement in 1964. Caldwell remained active in several voluntary and academic organizations until his death in Atlanta on April 15, 1977. A classroom building on the University of Georgia campus is now named in his honor.

1919 U.S. Secretary of State Polk certified that the 18th Amendment mandating national prohibition had been ratified by the required number of states. Georgia's General Assembly had ratified the amendment on June 26, 1918. On Jan. 16, five states ratified the amendment, resulting in the 38 states -- two more than the necessary three-fourths -- ratifying the amendment. According to its terms, the 18th Amendment went into effect one year from the date of its ratification.

1936 Georgia's Ty Cobb became one of the first five inductees in the new Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. Joining Cobb in being honored were Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Christy Matthewson.

1952 Gov. Herman Talmadge signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly officially naming the new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers multi-purpose lake north of Atlanta as Lake Sidney Lanier in honor of the famous Georgia poet. [Click here for information about the lake and its history.]

1955 Three years earlier, the General Assembly had authorized the purchase of Stone Mountain and adjoining land for development of a Confederate memorial and park. Since then, state officials had reached agreement with owners of three-fourths of the property needed for the park and memorial. However, owners of one-fourth of the land had refused to sell. So, on this day, Gov. Marvin Griffin signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly empowering him to take whatever steps were necessary -- either through negotiation or condemnation -- to obtain the remaining land.

1955 Gov. Marvin Griffin signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly calling on Congress to call a convention for the purpose of considering an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make education strictly a state responsibility and would specifically remove the jurisdiction of any federal court to consider any matter involving how state's administer their educational systems. The resolution was in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down on May 17, 1954. [Click here to view the resolution]

1958 Actress Joanne Woodward (born in Thomasville, Ga. on Feb. 27, 1930) married actor Paul Newman.

1977 Georgia congressman Andrew Young resigned his 5th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to accept the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1863 From Fredericksburg, Va. Sgt. Major William Mosely wrote his parents near Macon, Ga. of a battle that he had just undergone that pitted Confederate against Confederate:

"The Snow is about a foot deep, and we have had a fine time today. we had Several Battles today, though we fought with Snow balls. first a Texas Brigade attacked ours, and we got the best of the fight, and then a South Carolina Brigade attacked us and then our Brigade and the Texas Combined and faned them out, drove them through their Camps. . . . I tell you it is Amusing to See two or three thousand men get to throwing Snow balls at each other."

Source: Spencer B. King, Jr., Georgia Voices: A Documentary History to 1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974 reprint of 1966 original volume), p. 286.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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