Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

February 23

1818 Confederate general Jeremy Francis Gilmer was born in Guilford City, N.C. He graduated from West Point in 1839 and served as an officer in the engineer corps. In June 1861, Gilmer resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel. He served as chief engineer to Gen. Albert S. Johnston. Subsequently, Gilmer became chief engineer for the Department of Northern Virginia and head of the Confederate Bureau of Engineers. In Aug. 1863, he was promoted to major general.

Gilmer was responsible for helping plan the defense of Charleston, Atlanta, and Savannah. After the war, he became a civil engineer. Gilmer died Dec. 1, 1883 in Savannah

1838 Confederate general Gilbert Moxley Sorrel was born in Savannah, Georgia. He became a bank clerk and served as a private in a Savannah militia unit. On Jan. 3, 1861, Sorrell took part in the seizure of Ft. Pulaski by local militia. Subsequently, he served as a captain on the staff of Gen. James Longstreet at the Battle of First Manassas. Sorrel served under Longstreet during all of his battles. In Oct. 1864, he was promoted to brigadier general and commanded his own brigade in Mahone's division at Petersburg and Hatcher's Run.

After the war, Sorrell became a merchant and steamship executive. He died Aug. 10, 1901 in Roanoke, Va.

1861 In a special election,Texas voters ratified the Feb. 1 vote to secede by a statewide convention. Texas thus became the 7th southern state to secede from the Union.

1868 Sociologist, author, and pioneering civil rights activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Mass. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1895.

For almost 25 years, Du Bois taught and wrote as a faculty member at Atlanta University, later recalling that it was this period where he developed many of his thoughts and beliefs on black equality. He is probably best remembered for helping organize the Niagara Movement in 1905 and for co-founding the NAACP four years later. Later in life, Du Bois became bitter about the progress of civil rights in America. In 1961, he openly embraced communism and moved to Ghana, where he renounced his U.S. citizenship. Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana on Aug. 27, 1963 at age 95.

1976 In recognition of the American Revolution Bicentennial, the U.S. Postal Service issued a sheet of 50 different stamps showing the flags of all 50 states.

The primary first day of issue ceremonies for the flag stamps were held in Washington, D.C.

Additionally, first day of issue ceremonies were also held in Atlanta and the other state capitals.

For more information on the state flag stamps, click here.

1983 After having won the Heisman Trophy and being courted to play professional football, University of Georgia running back Herschel Walker announced he was going to skip his senior year with the Bulldogs to play professional football for the New Jersey Generals of the new U.S. Football League. Walker would sign a 3-year contract for $5 million.

1994 Actress Dakota Fanning was born in Conyers, Georgia.

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved by the governor on Feb. 23:

1875 Baxley (Appling County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1862 Theodore Montfort was one of the Confederate defenders of Fort Pulaski, located on an island near the mouth of the Savannah River. Eleven days after writing a his wife expressing confidence that the fort could not be taken, Theodore Montfort wrote again. He was still optimistic -- but a bit more somber:

"On yesterday morning the Yankees opened fire on our garrison and fire several shots, none of which done any harm. On yesterday evening on dress parade, while our men were formed in the yard, they [the Yankees] fired a rifle shell, which passed near us. There was considerable merriment at the expense of those who ran or dodged. I did not do either, yet I assure you to hear a large shell or ball whistling through the air, which you can hear for three miles, is not a very pleasant sound. yet I find that men will soon become accustomed to danger as they will to any and everything else. Yet to us it is all excitement and amusement. It is good we have something to excite and amuse us, yet in the dead hours of night, when all is silent, when we feel alone in the presence and care of our maker, then home with all its endearments come[s] crowding upon our memory. Then men who face and smile at danger, weep and pray for those dear ones at home."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), p. 149.

1862 From Morganton, Ga., M. Greenwood wrote Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown about a major problem with moonshining in Fannin County:

"By and with the advice and wishes of my friends and fellow-soldiers, I this evening drop you a few lines to let you know the condition and situation of our county. There is, I think, about fifteen or twenty stills in this small county and they are buying all or nearly all of the corn and rye in this whole country of the state, and many of the soldiers are deeply impressed with the idea of all the bread they bought up and they themselves had to go to the service of their country. This they would and are willing to [do], but the idea of leaving their wives and children to the mercy of a drunken set of men and extortioners is almost heart-rending. They have read the price of corn to $1.00 and some higher up in this northern country. Many speculators are going to and fro over the country and buying all they can for the purpose of speculating. The horrible idea of the drunkard insulting the poor wife and children at ever corner of the street is very hard to take. Some of our best citizens have recommended the volunteers to go and by the strong arm burst the stills. If there is not something done, I am fully convinced that many of the soldiers' wives and families of the soldiers will suffer for bread to eat, also for something to wear, as the price of shirting and thread has advanced so sharply. The people is in danger of suffering for bread and clothing, too."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), p. 155.

1947 In this day's column in the Atlanta Constitution, writer and future editor Ralph McGill offered his opinion on whether truth or objectivity is the better goal for a newspaper:

"For a long time now I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of journalistic teaching. I think that as newspapers generally we have not done the mass job of informing the people of the United States on matters about which they should have been informed, for the simple reason that we have been taught to worship a word -- Objectivity. Truth, I want. But not objectivity. I want truth and not objectivity, for the simple reason there isn't any such thing as objectivity, and cannot be any such thing. Not only that, there shouldn't be. Objectivity is a phantom. In chasing it we have dulled our stories. We too often made them frightfully boring, plodding unfolding of events, in which the words, like plowmen plodding their weary way, were strung together like mud balls when they might as well have been pearls. No story worth reading seeks to be 'objective.' It seeks, or should seek, two things -- to tell the truth and to be read. If it tells the truth so dully that it is not read, then it has failed utterly, no matter how 'objective' it may be rated. If it is to be read it must inform. To inform it must carry with it the weight of the reporter's experience, his background, his ability to use words, and his feeling for the story -- all this along with the facts. Any well-written story, which readers find 'good,' must of necessity carry with it some of the reporter's opinion. I do not mean an editorial opinion. But, in writing it he cannot fail to give certain weight and importance to the various phases of the story. He has an opinion as to what is the most important factor in it. This is all the more true if it be a good, well-trained, experienced reporter who is at work on the story. He, or she, uses his or her experience, or opinion, to judge and evaluate the story in putting it together. Therefore, it appears, it represents an opinion, or an evaluation developed out of the reporter's experience, training, and ability to write. We simply have been making a fetish of a word. And, in semantic confusion, we have given to that fetish-word a meaning it doesn't really possess. We have been sending young reporters out with an admonishment that their first duty is to be dull -- and unread. So, I have been going about the country for years, crying in the wilderness, saying that we needed good writing that would inform people, and not dull, 'objective' assembling of facts. . . ."

Source: Michael Strickland, Harry Davis, and Jeff Strickland (comp.), The Best of Ralph McGill, Selected Columns (Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1980), pp. 206-207.