Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

February 4

1789 Electors from the thirteen states unanimously elected George Washington to be the first president of the United States.

Statue of George Washington in Washington, Georgia

The results of the election, however, were not officially counted until April 6.

1861 Delegates from Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina convened in Montgomery at the Alabama state capitol to form the Confederate States of America. [In Texas, a convention had voted to secede subject to ratification by the citizens in an election scheduled for Feb. 23.]

Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History

Representing Georgia were Howell Cobb, T.R.R. Cobb, Benjamin Hill, Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, Eugenius Nisbet, Francis Bartow, Martin Crawford, Augustus Wright, and Augustus Kenan. Georgia's Howell Cobb was elected as convention president. Both Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs were considered early favorites to become president of the Confederacy.

Howell Cobb Source: Wikipedia Public Domain Image

Robert Toombs Source: Library of Congress

1943 Gov. Ellis Arnall signed a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to recreate the State Board of Education as a constitutional board. The amendment was part of a series of proposals by Arnall to reduce the powers of the governor in response to the previous administrations of Eugene Talmadge. In the subsequent general election, Georgia voters approved the amendment.

1947 Politician Sanford Bishop was born in Mobile, Alabama. After graduating from Morehouse College and Emory Law School, Bishop was admitted to the Georgia and Alabama bars, but made Georgia his home. In 1977 he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, where he served until 1991, when he was elected to the Georgia Senate. In November 1992, Bishop was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's second congressional district, and reelected in 1994. Georgia's congressional districts were successfully challenged in federal court and redrawn for the 1996 election. The second district, formerly majority black, was more racially balanced in 1996, but with a white majority.

Source: U.S. Congress

Bishop, an African-American, subsequently surprised many political observers by winning reelection despite the newly redrawn district. In Congress, he was appointed to the House Agriculture and Veteran's Affairs Committees. Later, he was appointed to the House Appropriations Committee.

1976 Following approval in the House on Jan. 19, the Georgia Senate approved a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to allow the governor to be reelected to one consecutive four-year term. Since the governor cannot veto proposed constitutional amendments, the Feb. 4 action by the Senate marked the resolutions date of approval. Subsequently in November 1976, Georgia voters approved the succession amendment. As a result, Gov. George Busbee was able to successfully run for reelection in 1978. Since passage of the amendment, every Georgia governor (with the exception of Roy Barnes in 2002) has won reelection for a second term.

1993 An Atlanta jury found General Motors negligent in the design of the fuel tank on its pickup truck and awarded $105 million to the parents of a teenager killed in 1989 when his vehicle was struck from the side and ignited.

2005 Actor Ossie Davis died in Miami, Florida. He was born on December 18, 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia.

Source: NPR/Howard University

2011 University of Georgia mascot Uga VIII died from cancer after a short reign; he became the official mascot on October 16, 2010, and continued through the regular football season, before his illness prevented him from representing the University in the Liberty Bowl game.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1764 From Savannah, Georgia royal governor James Wright wrote the British Board of Trade about a number of issues. Among these was Wright's plea to the board to force the governor of South Carolina to stop issuing land grants to the territory south of the Altamaha River (which Georgia claimed). Also, Wright was not optimistic that problems with the Creek Indians would end:

". . . It gives me great satisfaction my Lords to be Informed by your Lordships, That in order to remove all obstacles to the Improvement of the Lands to the Southward of the River Alatamaha which are annexted to this Province, every measure that can be Legally taken to set aside the grants Unwarrantably made in that Country by the Governor of South Carolina will be Pursued . . . .

". . . I shall certainly give my most serious attention to . . . a Total and Effectual stop put to all Smuggling attempts . . . .

"The Indian affairs continue as when I had the Honor to write your Lordships last, it now appears to have been as I at first Conceived, not a National design, but the act of a few villains. If they do not make satisfaction, I conceve [sic] nothing but Force will reduce them to order, they are People who have no Notion of beneficence, or Principle of gratitude. . . ."

Source: Kenneth Coleman and Milton Ready (eds.), Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, Vol. 28, Part II (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979), pp. 7-9.

1866 Less than a year after the Civil War, Atlanta faced a worsening smallpox epidemic, as noted in the diary of local merchant Samuel P. Richards:

"There is a great deal of smallpox now in our city. Some 300 or 400 cases it is said."

Source: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969 reprint of 1954 original volume), Vol. I, p. 705.