Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

November 20

1785 Former royal governor James Wright died in London, England. Born there in 1716, Wright came to American colonies in 1730 when his father was appointed chief justice of South Carolina. Wright followed in his father's footsteps, both in practicing law and amassing plantation lands. In 1757 he was chosen as South Carolina's agent to represent the colony in England. While there, he was appointed lieutenant governor of Georgia in May 1760. Following the resignation of Henry Ellis, Wright was named royal governor of Georgia in April 1761. Wright was the last, and the ablest, of Georgia's three royal governors.

When he took over the reins as Georgia's royal governor, the colony was entering an era of expansion after almost three decades of slow growth and uncertainty. With the French and Spanish no longer a threat after the French and Indian War, Georgia began a policy of actively encouraging Indian land cessions in order to attract new settlers to the colony. At the same time he worked hard for the interests of those already in Georgia, even moving his own financial and land assets from South Carolina to Georgia. Most Georgians were very pleased with Wright's leadership until the Stamp Act of 1765.

Georgia was the youngest and least populated of the thirteen colonies. Many of its elite had strong ties to England, which meant the movement for independence in Georgia trailed the other colonies. Some of this reluctance can be attributed to Wright, whose helpful and fair leadership was respected in the colony. Georgia was the only colony to allow a shipload of stamps to land and be sold. Even with opposition to England's policies rising, Wright still was able to get a large land cession for Georgia approved in London in 1773. But as the independence movement grew stronger, Wright was forced into taking arms against the colonists he had ruled so well. After being placed under house arrest, he escaped to a British ship and eventually convinced the British to provide enough troops to recapture Georgia. This was done in December 1778, making Georgia the only colony to have royal government reinstated. But Wright was never again in full control, as the Patriots established their own government in Augusta. When the British finally evacuated Savannah for good in 1782, Wright returned to London, where he was given a five-hundred pound annual pension as compensation for what he had lost in Georgia. After his death in 1785, Wright was buried in Westminster Abbey.

1817 In retaliation for attacks by white settlers, Seminole war bands crossed over into Georgia leading to the First Seminole War.

1858 - Former governor William Schley died in Augusta. [See the Nov. 4 entry for biographical information on Schley.]

1891 Lawyer and former Georgia governor James Johnson died in Chattahoochee County. Born in Robinson County, N.C. on Feb. 12, 1811, he moved to Georgia as a youth and graduated from the University of Georgia in 1832. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1835. With a successful law practice in Columbus, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1851. Defeated in his bid for reelection, Johnson became an opponent of secession and did not participate in the Civil War. After the war, Pres. Andrew Johnson named Johnson provisional governor of Georgia on June 17, 1865. After a new constitution was drafted and elections held, Johnson gave up the governor's office to Charles Jenkins on Dec. 19, 1865. Subsequently, Johnson served three years as a U.S. customs collector in Savannah. In 1869, he became a superior court judge in the Chattahoochee circuit. After six years as a judge, Johnson returned to the practice of law in Columbus.

1921 Georgia women's suffrage pioneer  Mary Latimer McLendon died.

1931 - Frankin D. Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, Ga. for his twenty-second visit to his "second home."

1946 Singer and guitarist Duanne Allman was born Nov. 20,1946 in Nashville, Tenn. He went on to fame with the Allman Brothers Band of Macon. At age 24, he died of a motorcycle accident in Macon on Oct. 29, 1971.

1965 After losing their first nine games, the new Atlanta Falcons defeated the New York Giants 27-16 for their first victory as a professional football franchise.

1980 A wildcat strike by bus drivers of the National Transportation Service forced the closing of Fulton County's public schools. More than one-hundred bus drivers picketed outside the company even though superior court judge Luther Alverson had ordered them back to work on the basis of a no-strike clause in the contract between the National Transportation Service and Teamsters Union Local 528. Superintendent of schools Dr. Alonzo Crim closed the schools at 6:45 AM when it became apparent that no more than forty of the district's 232 buses would roll that morning.

1996 House Republicans elected Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House for a second term.

1996 Atlanta Braves pitcher and 1996 NL Cy Young award winner John Smoltz re-signed with Atlanta with a four-year contract totaling $31 million--at the time, the largest amount ever paid a pitcher.

1997 The movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" had its East Coast world premier in Savannah. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film was adapted from John Berendt's best selling book about the murder trial of a Savannah antiques dealer.
 
 
 
 

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1734 Concerned about South Carolina's policies in regulating the Indian trade, Patrick Mackay, Georgia's agent with the Creeks, wrote the Georgia Trustees from Uchee Town:

". . . Carolina, now finding that by all appearance they will lose the trade to the Creek Nation, are become indifferent how it's regulated in the Nation, and by that means they grant licenses to every person that demands it, which may be attended with a dangerous consequence, if not timely adverted to. for if too many traders are thrown into the nation, of necessity the one will undersell the other, and then they will begin to cheat and play tricks with the Indians and by this means ruin the trade and maybe incense the Indians to a rupture. What will much conduce to a discord is the large quantities of rum now imported among the Indians and winked at by Carolina, since they find they are to lose the benefit of their trade. I advised as many as I saw of the traders to carry no rum into the nation, but they plainly told me without the whole they neither could nor would. For say they, if we have no rum, and our neighbouring trades have, the Indians of our towns will lay out none of our skins but will travel if it was an hundred miles to the trader's store that keeps the rum. Yet all agree that rum is a pernicious thing to be carried into the Nation, for they sway they never have discords with the Indians but when the Indians and traders get drunk and that it is scarcely impossible to disoblige any Indian if sober."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990).

1864 From her plantation near Covington, Ga., Dolly Lunt Burge wrote in her journal of her distress as Sherman's forces left town on their March to the Sea:

"This is the blessed Sabbath, the day upon which He who came to bring peace and good will upon earth rose from His tomb and ascended to intercede for us poor fallen creatures. But how unlike this day to any that have preceded it in my once quiet home. I had watched all night, and the dawn found me watching for the moving of the soldiery that was encamped about us. Oh, how I dreaded those that were to pass, as I supposed they would straggle and complete the ruin that the others had commenced, for I had been repeatedly told that they would burn everything as they passed. Some of my women had gathered up a chicken that the soldiers shot yesterday, and they cooked it with some yams for our breakfast, the guard complaining that we gave them no supper. They gave us some coffee, which I had to make in a tea-kettle, as every coffeepot is taken off. The rear-guard was commanded by Colonel Carlow, who changed our guard, leaving us one soldier while they were passing. They marched directly on, scarcely breaking ranks. Once a bucket of water was called for, but they drank without coming in. About ten o'clock they had all passed save one, who came in and wanted coffee made, which was done, and he, too, went on. A few minutes elapsed, and two couriers riding rapidly passed back. Then, presently, more soldiers came by, and this ended the passing of Sherman's army by my place, leaving me poorer by thirty thousand dollars than I was yesterday morning. And a much stronger Rebel! After the excitement was a little over, I went up to Mrs. Laura's to sympathize with her, for I had no doubt but that her husband was hanged. She thought so, and we could see no way for his escape. We all took a good cry together. While there, I saw smoke looming up in the direction of my home, and thought surely the fiends had done their work ere they left. I ran as fast as I could, but soon saw that the fire was below my home. It proved to be the gin house [cotton gin] belonging to Colonel Pitts. My boys have not come home. I fear they cannot get away from the soldiers. Two of my cows came up this morning, but were driven off again by the Yankees. I feel so thankful that I have not been burned out that I have tried to spend the remainder of the day as the Sabbath ought to be spent. Ate dinner out of the oven in Julia's [the cook's] house, some stew, no bread. She is boiling some corn. My poor servants feel so badly at losing what they have worked for; meat, the hog meat that they love better than anything else, is all gone."

Source: A Woman's Wartime Journal: an Account of the Passage over a Georgia Plantation of Sherman's Army on the March to the Sea, as recorded in the Diary of Dolly Sumner Lunt (Mrs. Thomas Burge)

1864 From six miles east of Eatonton, planter Joseph A. Turner recorded the arrival of Yankees in his journal:

". . . About 1 or 2 o'clock, 4 or 5 yankees came, professing they would behave as gentlemen. These gentlemen, however stole my gold watch, and silver spoons, besides whiskey, tobacco, and a hat or two, besides. About the middle of the afternoon, 4 more came, and got a few hats [Turner manufactured hats on his plantation] and one fiddle, and some whiskey. About night, two dutchmen came, and got some whiskey, a few hats &c."

Source: Spencer B. King, Jr., Georgia Voices: A Documentary History to 1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966 reprinted 1974), p. 301.

1864 Sherman's March to the Sea was causing all types of problems -- not only to innocent civilians but to the Union Army, as evidenced by General Order 22 issued by Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, commander of Sherman's 14th Corps near Eatonton, Ga.:

"I. The discharge of fire-arms by foragers and others has become an evil which must be stopped. Many men have already been wounded and a waste of ammunition incurred which we cannot afford. However no firing will be permitted under any circumstances. Animals and fowls must be caught, not shot.

"II. Useless negroes are being accumulated to an extent which be suicide to a column which must be constantly stripped for battle and prepared for the utmost celerity of movement. We cannot expect that the present unobstructed march will continue much longer. Our wagons are too much overladen to allow of their being filled with negro women and children or their baggage, and every additional mouth consumes food, which it requires risk to obtain. No negroes, therefore, or their baggage will be allowed in wagons and none but the servants of mounted officers on horses or mules.

"III. One pack-animal may be allowed to each company and so many to brigade and division headquarters as division commanders may think proper. All animals taken from the country are the property of the Government, and must be turned over to the quartermasters. All surplus draft animals must be used to strengthen the wagon trains. Indiscriminate mounting of unauthorized men cannot be allowed. Every commanding officer is responsible that no unauthorized man under him is mounted. . . ."

Source: U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1893, reprinted by The National Historical Society, 1971), Series I, Vol. XLIV, p.502.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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