A vice presidency can be thankless at best. But when you don’t want the job, and you don’t get along with your president, it’s even worse. Georgia’s Alexander Stephens reluctantly supported secession in 1861. To his horror, he was elected Confederate vice president by the Provisional Congress, which hoped his election would persuade other Southern […]
She was known as “Mother Russell,” the wife of the state’s chief justice and the mother of a U.S. Senator. Ina Dillard was born in Oglethorpe County in 1868. After attending the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, she married a young Athens lawyer named Richard Russell. He became one of the first judges to serve […]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on this day in 1882, but perhaps no other president besides Jimmy Carter had such strong Georgia ties. Stricken with polio in 1921, Roosevelt made his first visit to Warm Springs three years later. It became his second home. He founded what is now the […]
The son of sharecroppers in Webster County became one of the longest serving U.S. senators in Georgia history. Walter F. George graduated from Mercer Law School and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1922. He supported early New Deal programs but broke with President Franklin D. Roosevelt over his attempt to pack the Supreme […]
Georgia’s decision in 1861 to leave the United States had far-reaching and unintended consequences for all Georgians…and indeed all Southerners. Secession began after President Lincoln’s election in the belief that his Republican Party was aggressively anti-slavery. As the largest and most populous Deep South state, Georgia was crucial to the success of the secessionist movement. […]
James Jackson was a pugnacious politician with a fiery temper. Born in England in 1756, he came to Savannah as a teen and fought in the American Revolution. Jackson served in the first Congress under the new U.S. Constitution, and supported Thomas Jefferson’s fledgling Democratic-Republicans against Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists. Jackson was in the U.S. Senate […]
Marvin Griffin ran for governor as a staunch segregationist, but when it came to actually defying federal orders, as he said, “being in jail kind of crimps a governor’s style.” Griffin was born in 1907 in Bainbridge and was elected governor in 1954, six months after the Supreme Court’s decision that outlawed segregated schools. Griffin […]
Eugene Talmadge ran for Georgia governor five times. He won four. He served three and was, to put it mildly, quite a character. Born near Forsyth in 1884, he was known as the farmer’s champion. “I can carry any county,” he boasted, “that ain’t got street cars.” Talmadge fired elected officials who resisted his authority. […]
He may be best remembered as Jimmy Carter’s Attorney General, but Griffin Bell was a giant in the legal profession long before that. Born in rural Sumter County in 1918, Bell went to law school at Mercer University. In 1958, he was working for the Atlanta firm that became King & Spalding when he was […]
It can fall on any day between November 22 and 28, depending on the year, but it hasn’t always been the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is an American tradition that goes back to 1621, when the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians celebrated their shared harvest. American colonists routinely marked days of Thanksgiving, and in […]
