Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

February 15

1796 The enrolled copy of the infamous Yazoo Act was burned in front of the Georgia state capitol in Louisville. At the ceremony attended by Gov. Jared Irwin and state legislators, the act was burned by "fire from heaven" -- a feat accomplished by using a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays to ignite a flame.

1861 The Augusta Weekly Chronicle and Sentinel reported that in Montgomery, Alabama, where the provisional Confederate Congress was in session, vice president Alexander Stephens announced that a fellow Georgian had sent him a model for a new seal for the Confederacy. The design was referred to the flag committee.

1952 Pres. Harry Truman appointed former Georgia governor Ellis Arnall to head the new federal Office of Price Stabilization.

1952 Gov. Herman Talmadge signed several joint resolutions of the General Assembly, including resolutions that:

• Directed the Budget Bureau to purchase Stone Mountain and the adjoining land for development of a Confederate Memorial Park.
• Directed the Department of State Parks to purchase land in Gordon County for creation of a New Echota State Memorial Park at the site of the former Cherokee national capital.
• Urged the State Board of Education to require all high school students to take at least one year's course in U.S. history, geography, and civics. The resolution further urged the State Board of Regents to offer a year's course in the three subjects in every college. The timing and text of the resolution suggest that its motivation was not just in the name of good curriculum but was influenced by the Cold War and efforts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy to fight Communism. [Click here to read full text of resolution]
• Urged the other 47 states to join Georgia in trying to cut back federal aid to states. [Click here to read full text of resolution.]

1954 Augusta's WRDW-TV, a CBS affiliate, went on the air.

1964 W.A. Alexander, Ty Cobb, and Bobby Jones were inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

1979 Free agent first baseman Mike Lum signed with the Atlanta Braves.

1986 Morris Bryan, Bobby Lee Bryant, Walt Frazier, Joe Gerson, Billy Lothridge, "Zippy" Morocco, Martha Hudson Pennyman, and Jake Scott were inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved on Feb. 15:

1854 Thomson (then Columbia, now McDuffie County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1798 A month following his inauguration, Gov. James Jackson wrote to the U.S. Secretary of War from the state capitol at Louisville about problems with the Creek Indians:

"Mr. [Benjamin] Hawkins no doubt has informed you of the very horrid and never to be forgotten crime of ravishment of an innocent, virtuous wife by Tuskegee Tustunegau, a principal chief of the Creek Nation. She was a prisoner in their power and in the Nation. This unfortunate lady, a Mrs. Hilton, wife of a worthy citizen of Jackson County, after the kindest treatment toward them, received in return for her own hospitality the fatal stab to her own, and what no doubt she must conceive a thousand times worse, her husband's peace for life! Too much attention on part of Congress to Indians and too little to the frontier citizens of this state, by the giving up of the Tallassee country and their encouragement at the Colerain Treaty has occasioned this arrogance.

"The Indians have not stopped here. A most glaring and barbarous murder [was] committed a few days since. Mr. Vines, taking a Sunday evening's walk on the river side, was shot dead across the Oconee, where it is only 100 yards wide, by a party of Indians. His blood almost covered a small boy who was standing near him! The inhabitants collected to retaliate and cross the river. No other man but Colonel Lamar could have restrained their impetuosity and resentment."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 62-63.

1861 Not all Georgians were enthusiastic about secession. And, unless the question of secession was placed before the voters in a general referendum, a few Georgians talked about seceding from the state, as evidenced in this letter to Gov. Joseph E. Brown from James W. Aiken of Walker County:

"We, the people of Walker County and Dade County, Georgia, Dekalb County, do not intend to submit to decision of the secession movement which has been taken out of the hands of the people and fallen into the hands of demagogues and office-seekers, pick-pockets and vagrants about towns and cities and railroads and depots that has not got anything at stake, only a deck of cards, a quart of rot gut, [and] cigar stuck in their mouths. . . .

"If southern Georgia want[s] to leave the Union, let her go. But, we, the people of Cherokee, want to stay in the Union. So I hope you will let us go in peace and we will set up for ourselves and still remain in the Union. If not, we will try what virtue there is in flint and steel. We have 2500 volunteers now, their names enroll[ed]. They are sworn to stand to each other, their lives, their property and all we have, to support each other. We want Chattahoochee to be [the] line North and South, and if we cannot get it one way we know how we can get it at the point of bayonet and the muzzle of the musket. We are just as willing as you ever seen mountain boys. We know we have some that will be against us. We know how to manage them. We have the right to leave the South as much as the state has to rebel against the Union. If the people of Georgia will vote to go out of the Union, we will submit to it as cheerful as every you seen. And if it is not brought back to the people, we will fight it as long as there are men to fight. . . .Let the people have a vote on it. If they say so, we will go [but] not until then. I hope you will consider well what we have written to you."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 139-140.