George Rockingham Gilmer

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George Gilmer

George Rockingham Gilmer (born April 11, 1790 in Lexington , Georgia , † November 16, 1859 ibid) was an American politician and governor of the state of Georgia, which he also represented in Congress .

Ascent

Gilmer went in Abbeville ( South Carolina ) to school and then studied law . He interrupted his studies between 1813 and 1815 to take part in a campaign against the Creek Indians as a first lieutenant in the US Army . In 1818 he settled in Lexington as a lawyer. His political career began in the same year. In the following years he was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives and the US House of Representatives in Washington , where he was a member of the Democrats at that time ; he also worked as a lawyer again and again. From 1826 to 1857 he was on the board of directors of the University of Georgia .

Georgia Governor

Gilmer was Governor of Georgia from 1829 to 1831 and from 1837 to 1839. In his first term of office there was a political-legal conflict over the Indian policy of the government. The background was gold discoveries in the area of ​​the Cherokee Indians in northern Georgia. Since 1828, white prospectors had broken into the area and sometimes collided with the Indians. Governor Gilmer stated that the laws of Georgia were also valid in the Indian territory, as far as this was in his state, and could be applied to the Indians. At the same time, all whites who stayed in the area had to swear an oath of allegiance to the Georgian constitution. The governor's goal was to drive the Indians out. Therefore, in 1831 he also tried to convict the missionary Samuel Worcester , who had campaigned for the interests of the Indians. Worcester was sentenced to four years of forced labor for violating Georgian laws. Around the same time, the federal government became active on the Indian question. President Andrew Jackson ordered the eviction of the Indians based on the Indian Removal Act of 1830 . The judgment in the Worcester case was later overturned by the US Supreme Court, chaired by John Marshall , who also declared that the laws of Georgia did not apply to the Indians and that the citizens of Georgia were not allowed to enter the Indian territory. The Indians achieved this judgment with the help of William Wirt .

For Governor Gilmer, the verdict was a legal defeat, but he cared no more than President Jackson in Washington. Both continued their Indian policy unchanged. In 1835, the Indians agreed to an agreement that provided for their relocation to the Oklahoma Territory . In fact, that was an expulsion. For the Indians, the resettlement was associated with severe hardship and many deaths. The resettlement operation went down in history as the path of tears . This process ended during Gilmer's second term. Another important event of this term was the Second Seminole War on the Florida border . Gilmer set up a regiment to drive the Florida-fled Seminoles out of Georgia.

End of life and death

Gilmer's second term ended in 1839, then returned to Lexington as a lawyer and ran a farm. In the presidential election in 1840 he was part of the Whigs , to which he had meanwhile converted, to the Electoral College , which William Henry Harrison elected president. He served on the board of directors of the University of Georgia until 1857 and published several historical writings on life in early Georgia. He died in Lexington in 1860. Since 1822 he was married to Eliza Frances Grattan.

literature

  • James F. Cook: The Governors of Georgia, 1754-2004. 3rd edition, Mercer University Press, Macon (Georgia) 2005.
  • E. Merton Coulter: The Dispute over George R. Gilmer's Election to Congress in 1828. In: Georgia Historical Quarterly. 52: 159-86 (June 1968).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gilmer, George Rockingham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH Lexington , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1859
Place of death Lexington , Georgia