Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

July 18

1864 Relieved of command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, General Joseph E. Johnston spent most of the day updating new commanding general John Bell Hood on location of units defending Atlanta. Johnston then caught an evening train to Macon, leaving Hood alone to plan a new strategy to stop Sherman's advancing Union Army. The replacement of Johnston with Hood was met with disbelief in Confederate ranks, but Union soldiers were excited because they know Hood would follow a much more aggressive game plan than Johnston, whose repeated retreats had led Jefferson Davis to conclude the Johnston had no strategy to stop Sherman. Officers and enlisted men on both sides now knew that fierce fighting with substantial loss of life now was only days away.

Gen. Sherman issued orders to his generals for the next day's plan of action. Beginning at 5 a.m., Thomas would advance on Peachtree Creek, Schofield on Decatur, and McPherson would follow Schofield tearing up railroad and downing telegraph lines. Sherman's order also included the recipe for what would be known as "Sherman's Neckties": McPherson was directed to "keep every man of his command at work in destroying the railroad by tearing up track, burning the ties and iron, and twisting the bars when hot. Officers should be instructed that bars simply bent may be used again, but if when red hot they are twisted out of line they cannot be used again. Pile the ties into shape for a bonfire, put the rails across and when red hot in the middle, let a man at each end twist the bar so that its surface becomes spiral."

By 7 p.m., five miles of Georgia Railroad track had been destroyed, and McPherson's troops were within four miles of Stone Mountain.

1924 Gov. Clifford Walker signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly proposing a constitutional amendment to create Peach County. [The amendments were necessary because of a constitutional limit of 145 counties, meaning any additional counties had to be authorized through constitutional amendment.] The proposed new county was to be created from portions of Houston and Macon counties, and was named for the area's most famous crop. On Nov. 4, 1924, Georgia voters ratified the amendment creating Georgia's 161st -- and last new -- county. (In 1932, Campbell and Milton counties would merge with Fulton, leaving Georgia with 159 counties -- the maximum allowed by the state constitution since 1945.)

1927 Ty Cobb got his 4,000th hit, setting a Major League baseball record. Before his 23-year-long professional baseball career would end the following year, Cobb obtains an additional 191 hits.

1951 Georgia-born Ezzard Charles lost his world heavyweight boxing championship to "Jersey" Joe Walcott in a bout in Pittsburgh, Penn.

1970 At age 65, tightrope artist Karl Wallenda successfully walked across Tallulah Gorge on a 1000-foot cable suspended 700 feet above the gorge's floor.

1996 Olymphilex 96 -- the 1996 Centennial Olympic Philatelic Exhibition -- opened in downtown Atlanta the night before opening of the Summer Olympics with special ceremonies attended by IOC president Juan Samaranch, Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell, and many other dignitaries. As an official part of the Olympics, Olymphilex featured an international exhibition of stamps, coins, medals, and other collectibles related to the Olympics and sports in general. Additionally featured were museum-type exhibits from every Olympics since the games were revived in 1896.

2000 At age 61, Georgia U.S. Senator Paul Coverdell died unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage in Atlanta. A long-time Republican and former director of the U.S. Peace Corps, Coverdell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992.

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved by the governor on July 18:

1929 Oak Park (Emanuel County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1738 Anglican minister George Whitefield wrote of his return to Savannah after a visit to some outlying families:

"About ten o'Clock this Evening returned to Savannah, having set out from thence Yesterday to visit four or five Families that live at some of the outward Settlements about twelve Miles off. -- Their Beginnings as yet are but small, but I cannot help thinking there are Foundations laying for great temporal and spiritual Blessings in Georgia, when the inhabitants are found worthy.- Blessed be God, in Savannah they will hear the Word gladly, and People every where receive me with the utmost Civility and are not angry when I reprove them."

Source: [no author or editor cited], Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), p. 292.

July 18 From north of Atlanta, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston telegraphed Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General Samuel Cooper, who the day before had relieved Johnston of command of the Army of Tennessee:

"Your dispatch of yesterday received and obeyed. Command of the Army and Department of Tennessee has been transferred to General Hood. As to the alleged cause of my removal, I assert that Sherman's army is much stronger compared with that of Tennessee than Grant's compared with that of Northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly to the vicinity of Altanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and has penetrated much deeper into Virginia than into Georgia. Confident language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence of competency."

Also on this day, Gen. John B. Hood, now commander of the Confederate defense of Atlanta, issued the following message to soldiers and officers of the Army of Tennessee:

"Soldiers: In obedience to orders from the War Department I assume command of this army and department. I feel the weight of the responsibility so suddenly and unexpectedly devolved upon me by this position, and shall bend all my energies and employ all my skill to meet its requirements. I look with confidence to your patriotism to stand by me, and rely upon your prowess to wrest your country from the grasp of the invader, entitling yourselves to the proud distinction of being called the deliverers of an oppressed people."

Source: U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compiliation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), Vol. 38, Part 5, pp. 888-889.

1865 From Columbus, Ga., John Banks recorded in his journal the impact of emancipation on his former slaves:

"The effects of emancipation begin to be felt.

"Today many of my negroes left me. Celia, who has cooked for me more than forty years, left me. I made no opposition to it. Am now satisfied it will be carried out. George, my body servant, has left me. All the negroes about the yard are gone. I have an orphan boy, Wesley, which I had brought up from the plantation. Supposed I am entitled to, till they reach twenty-one years of age. All have left me but such as are of expense to me. Wesley is about ten years old and drove me in the buggy to town today. Windsor, who came in the buggy with me (a good boy) this morning, when I called for him found he was gone. The negroes at the plantation are still there but so demoralized that they work but little."

Source: John Banks, Autobiography of John Banks, 1797 - 1870 (Austell, Ga.: privately printed by Elberta Leonard, 1936), p. 38.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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