James Milton Smith

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James Milton Smith

James Milton Smith (born October 24, 1823 in Twiggs County , Georgia , † November 26, 1890 in Columbus , Georgia) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ) and governor of Georgia.

Youth and early years

The son of a farmer and preacher attended school in Culloden , Monroe County . After studying law, he opened a law firm in 1850. An attempt to be elected to the US House of Representatives failed in 1855. In January 1861, shortly before the Civil War, he became a judge in the judicial district of Flint.

In the civil war

When the war broke out, he volunteered for the military. By 1863 he was promoted to colonel and regimental commander. He participated in many civil war battles. Among other things, he also fought at Gettysburg . After being wounded, he resigned from the military and returned to Georgia. There he was elected to the second Confederate Congress.

Political rise

After the war, he ran a law firm in Columbus. In 1870 he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives and soon after became its President ( Speaker ). After the resignation of Governor Rufus Bullock and the short term of office of Benjamin Conley , he was elected as the new governor on December 19, 1871. The election was overshadowed by a Republican boycott.

Georgia Governor

With Governor Smith, the Democratic Party began to dominate Georgia for more than 130 years. His assumption of office also marks the end of the reconstruction period . He won the next regular election because of the support of conservative forces, including the Ku Klux Klan . The Republicans even accused him and his aides of fraudulent elections. His tenure lasted from 1872 to 1877 and was shaped by the country's post-war problems. He tried to reduce the national debt and at the same time to stimulate the economy. His system of lending prisoners to companies, especially the railways, as forced laborers was controversial, but was enforced even though it violated elementary human rights. Through this human trafficking the state saved the maintenance costs for the prisoners and was able to collect a "loan fee" at the same time.

Strikingly and by no means coincidentally, the number of convicts, over 90% black, soared during Smith's tenure. Smith himself admitted that the increase was not due to increased crime, but to a stricter and narrower interpretation of the law. The real political power of those years lay with the so-called Bourbon Triumvirate, which consisted of the ex-governor Joseph E. Brown , John B. Gordon and Alfred Holt Colquitt . Between 1872 and 1890, they built their new conservative Georgia, which was based on white supremacy and was more oriented towards pre-war society, even if slavery no longer existed formally. Governor Smith was largely in line with the aims of this policy.

Old age and death

After the end of his tenure in 1877, Smith ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the US Senate . In 1879 the new governor Colquitt appointed him to the railway committee, of which he became chairman. He held this office until 1885. Two years later, Smith, who had meanwhile worked as a lawyer, was appointed a judge at the District Court of Chattahoochee. There he suffered a stroke, the consequences of which he succumbed on November 25, 1890 after a long period of suffering.

Smith was married to Hester Ann Brown until 1880, after whose death he married Florida Abercrombie Wellborn. He didn't have any children.

literature

  • James F. Cook: The Governors of Georgia, 1754-2004 . 3rd edition, Mercer University Press, Macon, Ga. 2005.
  • Ellen Barrier Garrison: Old South or New? Georgia and the Constitution of 1877 . Dissertation, Stanford University, 1981.
  • Alexander Lichtenstein: Twice the Work of Free Labor. The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South . Verso, New York 1996.
  • Judson Clements Ward: Georgia under the Bourbon Democrats, 1872-1890 . Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1947.
  • Judson Clements Ward: The New Departure Democrats of Georgia. In terms of interpretation . In: Georgia Historical Review . Volume 41, September 1957, pp. 227-36.

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