Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

November 15

1732 James Oglethorpe set out in a carriage from London for Gravesend, a Thames River port about twenty miles down river from London. He carried a few personal belongings – certainly a sword – but most of what he and the colonists would need in the new colony had been sent ahead to be loaded aboard the Anne.

1815 Politician, farmer, and patriot Stephen Heard died in Elbert County, Georgia (some sources cite Nov. 16). Heard was one of the leaders of the Georgia backcountry Whig faction that supported the patriot cause in the American Revolution.

He fought under Elijah Clarke at the Battle of Kettle Creek in which the Tory forces were surprised and forced to retreat. But the British eventually occupied Augusta and Heard suffered under their rule. His wife and daughter were driven from their home in winter and died from exposure. Heard himself was captured and held prisoner in Augusta. After he managed to escape (family legend has it that he was rescued by a female slave). Heard served on the Executive Council, which ruled Georgia (at least in name) during a significant portion of the American Revolution. He was council president from 1780 to 1781 – making him in essence Georgia's chief executive during that time. During a portion of this time, Georgia's government met at Heard's Fort, a fortification located eight miles from the present day city of Washington, Georgia. After the Revolution, Heard served four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives, as justice of the Elbert County court, and as a delegate to the Georgia constitutional convention in 1795.

Heard eventually married again and became a prosperous farmer, having received many grants of land as rewards for his public service. Most of this land was in Elbert County, where he helped select the site of the county seat – Elberton. Here he built Heardmont, considered the most attractive house north of Augusta in its day. Heard died at his home on November 15, 1815. The Georgia General Assembly named a county in his honor December 22, 1830.

1859 Politician George R. Gilmer died in Lexington, Georgia. Born April 11, 1790 in what was then Wilkes (later Oglethorpe) County, Gilmer was educated at the academy of Moses Waddel (who later served as president of the University of Georgia). Gilmer studied law until the War of 1812, when he led an expedition against the Creek Indians. After the war, he returned to Oglethorpe County, where in 1818 he began the practice of law. That year, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. In 1820, Gilmer was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but poor health led him not to seek reelection. Back in the Georgia legislature by 1824, Gilmer was again elected to Congress in 1827 to fill the seat of Edward Tattnall. Gilmer was reelected in 1828, but because he failed to signify his acceptance within the time provided by law, he seat was declared vacant. The next year,Gilmer was elected Georgia governor to one two-year term (1829-31). In Dec. 1832, the General Assembly created Gilmer County out of land in Cherokee territory now claimed by Georgia.

Gilmer took office as governor in the midst of a gold rush, following the discovery of gold on the eastern boundary of the Cherokee Nation in 1828. Gilmer was a staunch believer in states' rights with respect to Indians living in Georgia, so the Georgia legislature passed a law extending state law to all of the Cherokee Nation that was situated in Georgia. Furthermore, all whites residing in Cherokee territory were required to sign an oath to obey Georgia law. After several white missionaries were arrested for not signing the oath, Georgia's actions were challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court – which ruled against Georgia (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia). But Gilmer defied the rulings and continued to work for the removal of the remaining Georgia Cherokees. In 1836, he was elected to a second term as governor (1837-39), and it was during his administration that the tragic Trail of Tears took place. After his term as governor, Gilmer retired from public life and returned to Lexington, Ga. Subsequently he authored his memoir, Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia, and served on the board of trustees of the University of Georgia.

Following his death, Gilmer was buried in the Lexington Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Lexington, Georgia.

1864 Early this morning, the bulk of Sherman's forces departed Atlanta to begin what would be known as the March to the Sea. The Union Army was divided into two wings. The right (or western) wing was commanded by Maj. Gen. Oliver Howard and consisted of the 15th and 17th Corps plus Kilpatrick's cavalry division.

Howard's wing marched southward out of Atlanta following the Macon & Western Railroad to White Hall, just south of the city, where they split. The 15th Corps would take the road to Jonesboro, and from there proceed to McDonough, Jackson, Clinton, and then reunite in seven days with the 17th Corps at Gordon (located south of Milledgeville). The planned route for the 17th Corps was to march from White Hall to Stockbridge, McDonough, Jackson, Monticello, and Gordon. Just north of Stockbridge, however, the 17th encountered several Confederate regiments that were part of the "Kentucky Orphan Brigade" (so-called because Kentucky had not seceded, which left Confederate units from that state as "orphans."). A brief engagement followed (sometimes designated as the Battle of Stockbridge). Greatly outnumbered, the Kentuckians temporarily blocked the Union advance – but they were soon outflanked and forced to retreat. To the west, one or two Kentucky regiments engaged the 15th Corps in another skirmish – but with no better results. The two Union columns camped for the night, ready to continue their March to the Sea the next morning.

Meanwhile, earlier that morning, Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum had led the 20th Corps eastward out of Atlanta with instructions to follow the Georgia Railroad eastward to Decatur, Lithonia, Covington, and Madison, tearing up the railroad along the way.

Slocum's forces were supposed to burn the railroad bridge over the Oconee River east of Madison, and then proceed southward to Georgia's capital city of Milledgeville.

With three of his four columns on the road, Gen. Sherman remained in Atlanta with the 14th corps to oversee the destruction of anything with possible military value to the Confederacy.

The next day, they would then proceed east on the road to Lithonia, then in a southeastern direction to Milledgeville, where the 20th and 14th corps would reunite in seven days.

For more, see This Week in Georgia Civil War History.

1980 The Atlanta Braves signed free agent outfielder Claudell Washington.

1980 Ranked number one in the national polls, the Georgia Bulldogs faced a critical game with Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Since playing their first game in 1892, the Georgia-Auburn game had developed into the longest football rivalry in the Deep South. In addition to Georgia's national ranking being on the line, the game took additional significance, as Auburn was Georgia head coach Vince Dooley's alma mater. In this year's game, Auburn took an early lead, but Georgia regained the momentum with a blocked punt which was returned for a touchdown. Auburn keyed their defensive efforts on Herschel Walker all day and held him to 84 rushing yards. But Bulldog quarterback Buck Belue took up the slack, rushing for 84 yards and a touchdown himself, while passing for 99 yards and another touchdown. Walker wasn't kept down the entire game – he iced Georgia's victory with an 18-yard touchdown run in which he reversed his field after seemingly being stopped for a loss. The 31-21 win clinched the Southeastern Conference championship for Georgia and left them with a 10-0 record, the final regular season game to be played against in-state rival Georgia Tech.

1998 Playing before a packed crowd in the Georgia Dome, the Atlanta Falcons beat the San Francisco '49ers by a score of 31-19. The win pushed the Falcons' season record to 8-2, extending the record for best start in franchise history set the previous week.

2005 Georgian Bill Anderson won the song writing award at the annual Country Music Association Awards presentation, for the song "Whiskey Lullaby."

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1733 Nine months after arriving with Georgia's first colonists, James Oglethorpe wrote the Trustees about unanticipated expenses he was facing during the colony's first year. Oglethorpe also revealed the fact that he did not plan a lengthy stay in Georgia:

"I am now making up of all the accounts, in some parts of which I find a great deal of perplexity . . . . The expenses have been very largely increased by the raising of prices of provisions in Carolina occasioned partly by our demand and partly by the failure of this year'[s crop. Besides, I was obliged for encouraging of the people to pay them for building the Storehouse &c. as also (several of our people being disabled by sickness) to take in people of this country for opening of communications, sending messages by land and water, giving gratifications for fetching intelligence among the Spaniards, giving rewards for taking of thieves and runaways. I shall be obliged to draw for farther sums to pay the Negroes who were employed upon my first coming here for sawing. The maintenance of the garden as a nursery for mulberry trees, orange trees, vines &c. at Charles Town has also an article of large expense, but which I believe you will think very well bestowed, since a sample of thorough fine silk has been there made which shows what may be done in this country. And we have gained one year's growth upon the mulberry and orange trees which is inestimable in a new settlement. I think everything here is now so well settled that I can leave it without danger of the colony's miscarrying. As I doubt not to see you soon and perhaps before this letter I shall say no more but that I am, Gentlemen, &c."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), p. 26.

1861 From Camp Marion, Va., Samuel Burney of Cobb's Legion wrote to his wife back in Georgia of a sad event--Confederates unknowingly firing on Confederates:

". . . I will tell you of a most melancholy occurrence which took place last Wednesday, November 13. Tuesday night at 12 o'clock we were ordered out on a secret expedition. . . . We marched about six miles to a dark swamp and remained deathly still 'till about daybreak. We then went on further 'till we had gone three or four miles and then halted. This distance we marched in mud and water over ankle deep. We halted, as I said, and were told to load our guns quickly and quietly as we were in two miles of Newport News and were two miles lower down that we intended to come. The guide led us in the wrong road. We had loaded but a few moments when two pickets of our rode up and inquired of us who we were. We told them we were Cobb's Legion and asked them who they were. They said they were Cumberland Cavalry, and, thinking all was right, they wheeled on their horses to leave. Just then someone said, "They are Yankees!" With our, "Mark, fire on them!" And the infantry companies fired, those on the right first. We were on the left and thought we were in an ambush when we heard the righthand companies fire. The boys got behind trees. I squatted in a tree top. Lieutenant Colonel Garnett and Major Bagley and Captain Morris of Burke County were out in front of the battalion. Major Bagley was killed and fell from his horse. Colonel Garnett's horse was crippled, and Captain Morris's hand was shot and his horse killed. Captain Morris had one of his men shot in the leg, which was amputated. There were no Yankees there, but our men thought so and fired on the above men. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), "Dear Mother: Don't grieve about me. If I get killed, I'll only be dead.": Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), p. 86.

For more, see This Week in Georgia Civil War History.

1864 From her plantation near Covington, Ga., Dolly Lunt Burge wrote in her journal:

"Went up to Covington to-day to pay the Confederate tax. Did not find the commissioners. Mid [a slave] drove me with Beck and the buggy. Got home about three o'clock. How very different is Covington from what it used to be! And how little did they who tore down the old flag and raised the new realize the results that have ensued!"

Source:A Woman's Wartime Journal: an Account of the Passage over a Georgia Plantation of Sherman's Army on the March to the Sea, as recorded in the Diary of Dolly Sumner Lunt (Mrs. Thomas Burge)

1864 On this evening in Atlanta, Henry Hitchcock (Sherman's military secretary) recorded in his diary:

"Today the destruction fairly commenced . . . .This P.M. the torch applied . . . .Clouds of heavy smoke rise and hang like pall over doomed city. At night, the grandest and most awful scene. . . From our rear windows . . . horizon shows immense and raging fires, lighting up whole heavens. . . . First bursts of smoke, dense, black volumes, then tongues of flame, then huge waves of fire roll up into the sky: presently the skeletons of great warehouses stand out in relief against against and amidst sheets of roaring, blazing, furious flames, – then the angry waves roll less high, and are of deeper color, then sink and cease, and only the fierce glow from the bare and blackened walls . . . as one fire sinks another rises, further along the horizon, . . . it is a line of fire and smoke, lurid, angry, dreadful to look upon."

Source: M.A. DeWolfe Howe (ed.), Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864-May 1865 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 56-57.

1865 From DeKalb County, Martha A. Quillin wrote a poignant letter to her cousin, Sarah Quillan in Illinois, of the damage done by Sherman's forces on this day in 1864 to her neighbors. Even though her home was spared, her contempt for Yankees was not:

". . . Heaven grant I may never pass another such day. Could you have looked in upon us but for a moment, you would have thought it impossible for life and reason to survive the torture to which mind and body were that day subjected. But that day had an end, and in safety we welcomed the much needed repose that night along brought us. But the act of dating my letter brings forcibly to my mind the fact that day one year ago was the most miserable of all my life. Sherman's troops were then passing us on their way to Savannah.

"Their orders were positive to burn and destroy everything on their march, and well they executed this most christian order of his most christian majority. All day and all night one continual stream of wagons and guards poured by. As darkness came on the work of burning commenced, from Atlanta to Rockbridge, a distance of twenty miles, we in the center. On every side, as far as the eye could reach, the lurid flames of burning buildings lit up the heavens and dissipated the darkness of night. I could stand out on the verandah, and for two or three miles watch them as they came on. I could mark when they reached the residence of each and every friend on the road. I could see the first building fired, and then the torch carried round and round until I knew that everything on the premises was wraped in flames; then hear the wild shout they raised, as torch in hand, they started for the next house. The night was cold, but I never once left my post. With my sister and others I stood from dark until daylight, and watched their onward progress. Calmly I calculated the distance they travelled in a given time; how long it took to fire such a number of buildings, and ascertained almost to the very minute when the torch would be set to our own house. As the flames rolled on I could hear, or fancy that I heard, above the oaths, the yells, the eternal gab of the Yankee army, the screams of the frightened neighbors as the fire swallowed up the labors of a life time. Thus the night rolled on. The Academy, the Church [Indian Creek], in two or three hundred yards of us, were laid in ashes. The torch was several times brought to fire our house, but each time it was extinguished. The sitting room was Headquarters and full of officers who must not be disturbed. Consequently an order had been given to burn nothing on the place. I knew nothing of it. I looked abroad upon the smoldering ruins, the smoke almost suffocated me. I knew it was not long until daylight -- but had no reason to hope that we would have a change of clothing, a mouthful of bread or a roof to shelter us. If it was sin may Heaven forgive me if I prayed that might never see the destruction, the deep distress, the morn would reveal to me.

"That, too, has all passed and lives only in memory; but no one, I hope, will ever expect me to love Yankees. They tell us the war has ended, and some cry lustily, peace peace. I have peered into the deep gloom that surrounds us and can scarce see a glimmer of that welcome visitant. The shadow of a great sorrow has darkened our land. He, who a short time since, was the pride of our Confederacy, the pure statesman, the christian gentleman, the accomplished scholar, our beloved President Jefferson Davis, now ekes out a miserable existence in a Yankee bastile. In proportion as his sufferings increase, our sympathy for him and hatred of his oppressors increase also. One thing in the past few weeks has cheered us a little and that is the return to his home of A. H. Stephens from his long confinement in a Yankee prison. he comes back to us with his head as white as the eternal snows of winter, and we hope, before a great while, to know all that he suffered while there. . . .

"We are not sorry for anything we have done down here, are not repenting, are not whipped or subjugated, or anything of that kind. True, we were with numbers overpowered, but we battled upon our own soil, and for that soil we contended for every principle of honor and justice, and for the most sacred rights – for the sanctity of home, for self government, for the truths of God's word. The North fought for no principle and no right -- her sole aim was to subjugate the South.

". . . This is now the poorest country in the world, and we are homeless wanderers through the desert. We had nothing left us and nothing to buy with, so I send you a scrap of our dresses we have been making. The cotton grew here and every thread of it was manufactured in the family. I wove it myself. We call it Dixie silk."

Source: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Its Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969 reprint of original 1954 volume), pp. 694-695.