Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

March 4

1737 While James Oglethorpe was in England trying to gain government funding and an army regiment for Georgia, the Council of the Spanish King met in Madrid to consider Spain's response to Oglethorpe's earlier excursions to the St. Johns River in Spanish Florida.

1747 Casimir Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolution killed during the siege of Savannah, was born in Poland.

1751 In Savannah, the Filature on Reynolds Square -- a large wooden building where silkworm cocoons were transformed into spun silk -- opened. This was the first silk factory in America. Seven years later, the filature burned down -- but it was rebuilt in 1764. However, by then, rice was more important than silk in Georgia, and the building was converted to an assembly hall in 1766.

1762 The Georgia General Assembly passed a law requiring church attendance and prohibiting travel (except to church and a few other exceptions) on Sundays. [See "In Their Own Words . . ." below.]

1777 Button Gwinnett was elected as Georgia's second president of the Council of Safety. This office, first filled by Archibald Bulloch, had been created by Georgia's Provincial Congress as chief executive of the patriot government that replaced Britain's colonial government. Subsequently, by signing the Declaration of Independence, Georgia declared itself to be a free and independent state -- making Bulloch Georgia's first state governor. However, he died suddenly in late February 1777, and Button Gwinnett was elected to succeed him.

1789 The first Congress under the new U.S. Constitution met in Congress but had to adjourn for lack of a quorum.

1807 Abraham Baldwin died in Washington, D.C. See November 22, 1754 entry for biographical information.

1817 William Rabun, president of the Georgia Senate, assumed office as governor of Georgia. [See Oct. 24 entry for biographical information.]

1856 Gov. Herschel Johnson approved legislation authorizing Georgia's governor to call a statewide convention should Congress enact any law regulating or prohibiting slavery.

1861 In Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president of the United States. Meanwhile in Montgomery, Ala., the Confederate Congress hastily moved to get a new national flag for the Confederacy flying prior to Lincoln's inauguration. So urgent was this goal that although a congressional committee approved a national flag -- which became known as the "Stars and Bars" -- the Confederate Congress overlooked actually enacting a flag statute.

1883 Gov. Alexander Stephens died in office. [See Feb. 11 entry for biographical information on Stephens.]

1913 Woodrow Wilson, the first U.S. president with substantial Georgia ties, was inaugurated. Part of Wilson's youth was spent in Augusta. Later, Wilson lived in Atlanta, where he practiced law and married Ellen Louise Axson from Rome, Ga. in 1885.

1935 Before the Braves played in Atlanta and Milwaukee, they were based in Boston. On this day, Babe Ruth -- the Boston Braves' newest acquisition -- reported for spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla. Unfortunately, Ruth was overweight and poorly prepared.

1939 Gov. E.D. Rivers signed a joint resolution of the Georgia General Assembly adopting an official "Georgian's Creed" for all citizens of the state. [Click here to read text of creed and resolution.]

1953 Gov. Herman Talmadge signed legislation requiring that all Georgia schools and colleges supported by public funds had to offer instruction in the history of the U.S. and Georgia, and that no student could graduate without passing a test on these subjects. The new law expanded a similar requirement already on the books requiring students to pass a test on the essentials of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.

1980 Twelve year old Angel Lenair disappeared in Atlanta; her body was disocovered six days later. This crime was part of the Atlanta Child Murders case.

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved by the governor on March 4:

1856 Lamar (Baker County) and Tunnell Hill (Whitfield County)

1875 Tennille (Washington County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1733 Early Georgia colonist Peter Gordon recorded how James Oglethorpe trained the colonists in the use of firearms:

"Sunday the fourth, after Divine Service, we were ordered under arms, and the Tythings marched regularly into the wood, a small distance from the town, where Mr. Oglethorp ordered a mark to be fixed up, at a hundred yards distance to be shott at by all the men, and who ever shott nearest the mark, to have a small prise of seven or eight shillings value. This custome which was intended to train the people up to firing, and to make them good marksmen, was generally observed, for many Sundays afterwards. That being the only day we could be possibly spared from labour, and with some success."

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. 19.

1762 The Georgia General Assembly hoped to make Sundays a time for worship and rest, as indicated by an act passed on this day:

"That all and every person and persons whatsoever, shall on every Lord's day . . . having no reasonable or lawful excuse on every Lord's day shall resort to their Parish Church, or some meeting or Assembly of Religious Worship, Tolerated and allowed by the Laws of England, and there shall abide, orderly and soberly during the time of prayer and preaching, on pain of forfeiture for every neglect, of the sum of Two shillings and six pence Sterling.

"No . . . Person whatsoever shall Travel on the Lord's day . . . except it be to the place of Religious Worship, and to return again, or to visit or relieve any sick person or unless the person or persons were belated the Night before, and then to Travel no further than to some convenient Inn or place of Shelter for that day, or upon some extraordinary occasion, for which he, she, or they shall be allowed to Travel under the hand of some Justice of the Peace of this Province."

Source: Allen D. Candler (ed.), Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: State of Georgia, 1910), Vol. XVIII, pp. 508=515.

1839 On St. Simons Island, Fanny Kemble wrote of her continuing dismay at how at the conditions faced by the female slaves of her husband:

"I have had an uninterrupted stream of women and children flowing in the whole morning to say 'Ha de, missis?' Among others, a poor woman called Mile, who could hardly stand for pain and swelling in her limbs; she had had fifteen children and two miscarriages; nine of her children had died; for the last three years she had become almost a cripple with chronic rheumatism, yet she is driven every day to work in the field. . . .

"Another of my visitors had a still more dismal story to tell; her name was Die; she had had sixteen children, fourteen of whom were dead; she had had four miscarriages: one had been caused with falling down with a very heavy burden on her head, and one from having her arms strained up to to be lashed. I asked her what she meant by having her arms tied up. She said their hands were first tied together, sometimes by the wrists, and sometimes, which was worse, by the thumbs, and they were then drawn up to a tree or post, so as almost to swing off the ground, and then their clothes rolled round their waist, and a man with a cowhide stands and stripes them. I give you the woman's words. She did not speak of this as of anything strange, unusual, or especially horrid and abominable; and when I said: 'Did they do that to you when you were with child?' she simply replied: 'Yes, missis.' And to all this I listen -- I, an Englishwoman, the wife of the man who owns these wretches, and I cannot say: 'That thing shall not be done again; the cruel shame and villainy shall never be known here again.' . . .

"I went out to try and walk off some of the weight of horror and depression which I am beginning to feel daily more and more, surrounded by all this misery and degradation that I can neither help nor hinder. . . ."

Source: John A. Scott (ed.), Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Anne Kemble (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), pp. 240-241.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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