Georgia might have become a Spanish colony had it not been for the Battle of Bloody Marsh, fought on this day in 1742. The battle on St. Simon’s Island was part of a global clash of arms between two empires: England and Spain. The two nations were at odds over pirateering on the high seas […]
This could be your lucky day and not just because you’re reading this. In Georgia, lotteries have been around since the 18th century. Indian lands were distributed through a lottery in the 19th century. Governor Zell Miller campaigned promising an education lottery, and in 1991 the legislature passed an amendment to Georgia’s constitution that designated […]
The President was on Sea Island on this day 2004 for the annual Group of 8, or G-8 Summit. President George W. Bush welcomed the leaders of the world’s industrial democracies– Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom — as they met for three days to discuss a host of issues. The […]
He was known as Georgia’s education governor, though he never attended college himself. Joseph Terrell was born in Meriwether County in 1861 and became a lawyer by studying with a Greenville, Ga., attorney. At 23, he won a seat in the Georgia House and was in the Georgia Senate before he turned 30. Terrell supported […]
Jimmy Carter first ran for governor in 1966 as a moderate, losing to Lester Maddox. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. In 1970, Carter ran as the candidate of the ordinary guy, making not-so-subtle racial appeals to white conservative Georgians. In the Democratic primary, he denounced former Governor Carl Sanders as a crony of […]
It may be the Jordan River, but Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff’s name was pronounced “Jerden.” Born in 1944, Hamilton Jordan always loved politics. He was voted “most likely to become governor” in high school. He got close. Literally. After interning for Senator Richard Russell, he worked on Jimmy Carter’s failed try for Georgia governor […]
George Wallace he most definitely was not. Carl Sanders was born in 1925 in Augusta. He served in the Air Force in World War II, then returned to the University of Georgia for his law degree. He entered politics on the fast track: elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1954, the state Senate […]
The Mexican War in 1848 triggered new and thorny issues in a country already beset with divisions between North and South. The war added 500,000 square miles of new western territory. Would the new territory be slave or free, and who would decide? Could Congress ban slavery from new territories or would settlers decide for […]
As first president, George Washington was the living symbol of the independent United States. After his inauguration, he embarked on a grand tour designed to cement allegiance to the fledgling American nation. He toured the New England states first and then traveled south. In May 1791, Washington came to Georgia for the first and only […]
Georgia’s lottery is nothing new. Between 1805 and 1833, the state held eight land lotteries. Seventy-five percent of Georgia was sold to roughly 100,000 people for bargain prices. As land-hungry Georgians began migrating westward after the American Revolution, the state negotiated treaties with the Creek and Cherokee tribes—or simply took their land—and then distributed the […]
