Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

May 6

1789 A constitutional convention meeting in Augusta ratified a new state constitution -- the Constitution of 1789.

1861 A statewide convention in Arkansas adopted an ordinance of secession, making Arkansas the ninth southern state to secede.

1861 Pres. Jefferson Davis signed into law an act of the Confederate Congress recognizing a state of war between the U.S. and Confederacy.

1913 A second exhumation of Mary Phagan's body took place, this time to look for fingerprints. A fingerprint expert was called in to help with the case. Click here for a detailed accounting of the case.

1968 Gov. Lester Maddox released a strongly worded statement accusing unnamed members of the Georgia Democratic party of trying to gain publicity by attacking him. In his release, Maddox charged: "[A] few so-called Democrats are determined to wreck the party and its structure -- and if necessary, wreck Georgia in their sinister attempt to get Lester Maddox."

1968 Georgia's state auditor charged that thirteen Georgia hospitals were charging from 2 to 50% more for treatment of patients using Medicare and/or Medicaid than that charged private patients. A spokesman St. Mary's Hospital in Athens -- one of the hospitals listed by the auditor -- responded that it was simply attempting to regain funds lost in the treatment of those patients.

1976 As DeKalb County employee members of the Laborers International Union entered the fourth day of a strike, violence broke out. Police had to use tear gas to break up two demonstrations that became near riots. Six strikers were arrested, and one non-striking sanitation truck driver was injured.

1996 The Atlanta Constitution reported that Atlanta was the most violent city in the nation according to FBI crime statistics.

2003 Carl Isaacs, the leader of the group responsible for the horrendous Alday murders in Donalsonville, GA in 1973, was put to death by lethal injection.

2008 William Earl Lynd became the first person in Georgia (and the U.S.A.) to be executed after the Supreme Court ruled death by lethal injection was constitutional. Lynd was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and had been on death row for 20 years.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1778 In Augusta, the state legislature met to consider what to do about South Carolina loyalists traveling through Georgia to the British colony of East Florida. The assembly's clerk, James Whitefield, wrote to Congress:

"I have in command from the General Assembly now sitting to acquaint Congress with the distressed situation of this state and represent in some measure the urgent necessity which requires immediate exertions from your respectable council in its behalf. Although invaded by sea and land and surrounded by a multitude of enemies who commit daily depredations, the people still retain an unabated ardor to uphold and maintain that sacred cause which has for its object the civil and independent rights of the United States.

"About five weeks since a large body of disaffected persons amounting to about 600 men by the most accurate information embodied themselves in the back parts of the state of South Carolina and forced a march through the upper settlements of this state to the province of East Florida and formed a junction with the tyrant's forces and adherents there. . . .

". . . General Provost with an army of about 1200 men . . . left Augustine and has established strong posts, one on the River St. John's and another on the south side of St. Mary's Rivers . . . . I must add to this that the enemy formed a further design on establishing a post at Frederica, but the gallant behavior of the officers and men belonging to the galleys in the service of this state and the troops under the command of Colonel Elbert prevented it by taking three of the enemy's vessels of war . . . .

" . . . We have concluded on an expedition against the province of East Florida, which is now forwarding with all possible dispatch. To speak in terms of positive truth the question must shortly be decided whether Georgia will be free or not.

"The alarming complexion of things induced the Assembly to request the Governor to take the field in person, which he has accordingly done with a body of militia and with the assistance from South Carolina to cooperate with the Continental troops under the command of General Howe. . . .

"The innumerable evils arising from our large emissions of paper currency render it a matter of necessity that Congress should assist this state with the means of redeeming itself I am there commanded by the Assembly to request that Congress would immediately furnish us with one million of Continental dollars for the purpose of supporting the credit of our former emission made for Continental service and defraying the expense of the present expedition. A supply of this nature forwarded with dispatch would raise the spirits of the distressed people whose critical situation in such as not to admit of any delay. It [Georgia] is a frontier state, sir, far removed from the immediate eye of Congress, laboring under the weight of internal and external oppression. . . ."

Source: Edward J. Cashin (ed.), A Wilderness Still The Cradle of Nature: Frontier General (Savannah, Beehive Press, 1994), pp. 179-181.

1865 In the wake of Northern troops occupying her hometown of Washington, Ga., Eliza Frances Andrews' journal entries became increasingly bitter, as evidenced by the following comments:

"About noon, two brigades of our cavalry passed going west, and at the same time a body of Yankees went by going east. There were several companies of negroes among them, and their hateful old striped rag was floating in triumph over their heads. Cousin Liza turned her back on it, Cora shook her fist at it, and I was so enraged that I said I wished the wind would tear it to flinders and roll it in the dirt till it was black all over, as the colors of such a crew ought to be. Then father took me by the shoulder and said that if I didn't change my way of talking about the flag of my country he would send me to my room and keep me there a week. We had never known anything but peace and security and protection under that flag, he said, as long as we remained true to it. I wanted to ask him what sort of peace and protection the people along Sherman's line of march had found under it, but I didn't dare. . . . It made me think of that night when Georgia seceded. What would father have done if he had known that that secession flag was made in his house? It pinches my conscience, sometime, when I think about it."

Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), pp. 219-220.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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