Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

September 22

1790 Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, a man who would have many professions, was born in Augusta, Georgia. He attended Yale and a law school in Connecticut before returning to Georgia where he began the practice of law in 1815. In 1817, he moved to Greensboro, where four years later he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. In 1822, Longstreet was named superior court judge, serving three years until he returned to Augusta to resume the practice of law. In the early 1830s, he began writing and penned his most famous work--Georgia Scenes, a humorous series which told of life in the late 1700s. Between 1834 and 1836, Longstreet published the Augusta States Rights Sentinel. Then, in 1838, he became a Methodist minister. The next year he became president of Emory College, a post he held for nine years. Next, he briefly was president of a Louisiana college before becoming president of the University of Mississippi (1849-56). In 1858, Longstreet became president of the University of South Carolina. During the Civil War, he served as chaplain of a Georgia militia unit. After the war, he returned to Oxford, Mississippi, where he died July 9, 1870.

1863 Atlanta received 163 Union prisoners captured two days earlier at the Battle of Chickamauga. These were the first Federal prisoners in the Civil War to be sent to Atlanta.

1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes arrived in Atlanta on a good-will trip in an attempt to mend North-South relations after Reconstruction. Hayes became the second sitting president to visit Atlanta (the first being Millard Fillmore, who came in 1854).

1906 On this Saturday night, a group of white Atlanta youths and men decided to go searching for blacks to beat up after hearing reports that blacks had attempted four assaults of white women at their homes. The group quickly turned into a mob, and soon all blacks were fair game. The Atlanta Race Riot would continue Sunday and Monday. Before it ended, official reports reflect 25 blacks and 1 white were killed and many more wounded--though the actual casualty list was probably much higher.

1909 Artist Lamar Dodd was born in Fairburn, Georgia. Dodd went on to become a major southern and Georgian artist at the University of Georgia, where he became director of the Art School, which after his death in 1996 was named for him.

1918 To conserve fuel for use in America's participation in World War I, Atlanta's city gasoline administrator prohibited driving on Sundays--except for emergency vehicles. There were no civil or criminal penalties, but police were to report the names of anyone breaking the order to the newspapers for public ridicule.

1932 In a tragedy showing the extreme personal effects of the Great Depression, Atlanta iron worker J. Walter Meeks shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself. Meeks was despondent over his inability to find work, while his wife eked out a living for the family as a night waitress. She had just returned home from working all night and sent their ten-year old son off to school when the shootings occurred.

1996 An 8-2 victory over the Montreal Expos gave the Atlanta Braves their fifth consecutive division title -- the first National League team to accomplish this feat. In fact, only two other teams in the Major Leagues -- the New York Yankees and the Oakland A's -- have won five division titles in a row. The win also meant that Braves manager Bobby Cox now joined Casey Stengel as the only two managers in Major League history to have singularly led a team to five consecutive division titles. The game was also significant to pitching ace John Smoltz, who won his 23rd game (tying an Atlanta record for season wins), struck out 10 (setting an Atlanta record for strikeouts in a season), and hit a 3-run home run. Smoltz's impressive performance helped him subsequently win the Cy Young Award for the 1996 season.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1739 Returning from his important visit to Coweta to renew English friendship and alliances with the Creek Nation, James Oglethorpe visited the Salzburgers at Ebenezer, as John Martin Boltzius recorded in his journal:

"At three o'clock in the afternoon we had the pleasure of seeing General Oglethorpe at our place. He came down the river in a trading boat with his retinue and remained for a few hours in my house, which again pleased him very much. He was delighted with out arrangements and with the industry of the Salzburgers; and, because he has received letters that the Lord Trustees are inclined to accept more Salzburgers and other persecuted Protestants, arrangements will be made to lodge them here according to their needs. The Lord Trustees no longer plan to maintain a storehouse and therefore he is pleased that our people have such a rich harvest and will gradually have oxen and hogs for slaughtering. He left six muskets and some powder here; because a number of Negroes or Moorish slaves in Carolina have taken up arms, plundered and burned many houses, and slain the people, it is feared that they may cross the Savannah River into this colony. . . .

"Mr. Oglethorpe told me with what great honor and joy he had been received by the Indian nations and how peace had been instituted between some of them who had long been waging a war against each other. The remote nations had sent deputies to him to renew their friendship with the English and to help them in every way in case the land they received from the Indians should be disputed. He does not believe (as rumor now has it) that the Spaniards will try to accomplish anything against this colony; for they have more to fear from us that we from them, unless the Lord has ordained some misfortune for us. He departed from us at give o'clock and assured us of his continued affection. May God accompany him!"

Source: George Fenwick Jones and Renate Wilson (ed. and trans.), Detailed Reports on the Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America . . . Edited by Samuel Urlsperger (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), Vol. 6, pp. 220-221.

1863 From Chickamauga, Joseph Cumming wrote to his wife about the costly Confederate victory in the Sept. 19-20 battle in north Georgia:

"I have just been to General Bragg's headquarters with a letter of congratulations, and he himself told me of these facts. He is very quiet over his signal victory. But of course he is very happy. It has, however, been at a tremendous cost that he has gained [it]. Our loss in killed and wounded alone will be between 10,000 and 15,000. . . . The battle was very desperate. Three distinct times, the corps or portions of it was broken, and the General and his staff rallied it, sometimes under very heavy fire and then we were very much exposed. The enemy was finally defeated all along his line after dark Sunday evening, when the extent of our victory could be ascertained and pursuit was impossible. It was a battle in which victory was the result of persistent, indomitable fighting, men being rallied invariably when broken."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), "Dear Mother: Don't grieve about me. If I get killed, I'll only be dead.": Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), P. 272.

1864 In several ways, Gertrude Thomas's journal entry for this day proved to be prophetic:

"Was it ominous that I should find my pen split when I took it up to write tonight? In these troublous times how superstitious we become. Shall I dare hope that this new Journal which I am commencing will record Peace, an independent Southern Confederacy? Truly the skies are gloomy and the heavy storm appears ready to discharge its thunders in our very midst. Yet how calm, how indifferent we are -- we laugh, we smile, we talk, we jest, just as tho no enemy were at our door. And yet the idea has several times suggested itself to me that someday I would have to aid in earning my own support [which would happen]. We have made no arrangement whatever for such a contingency. Gold has increased in value and we have not a dollar [most of their family wealth was in Confederate bonds and slaves] -- and yet I am hopeful of the success of our cause, the ultimate success of our Confederacy, while I do not think it improbable that we will lose our fortunes [they did] before that final success is achieved. . . ."

Source: Virginia Ingraham Burr (ed.), The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 236-237.

1881 While recuperating from ill health in Wilmington, N.C., Woodrow Wilson wrote a letter to Charles Talcott indicating his reasons for deciding to practice law in Atlanta:

"After innumerable hesitatings as to a place of settlement, I have at length fixed upon Atlanta, Georgia. It, more than almost every other Southern city, offers all the advantages of business activity and enterprise. Its growth during late years has been wonderful. . . . And then, too, there seem to me to be many strong reasons for my remaining in the South. I am familiar with Southern life and manners, for one thing -- and of course a man's mind may be expected to grow most freely in his native air. Besides there is much gained growing up with the section of country in which one's home is situate, and the South has really just begun to grow industrially. After standing still, under slavery, for half a century, she is now becoming roused to a new work and waking to a new life. There appear to be no limits to the possibilities of her development; and I think that to grow up with a new section is no small advantage to one who seeks to gain position and influence."

Source: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969 reprint of 1954 volume), Vol. II, pp. 46-47.

© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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