Governor Henry McDaniel
The road to becoming Governor of Georgia…
In 1865 Henry McDaniel returned to Monroe, Georgia, after spending the final three years of the Civil War hospitalized and imprisoned in Ohio. He returned to Monroe as a lawyer, businessman and devout Baptist. On December 20, 1865, he married Hester Caroline Felker in Monroe.
In 1865 McDaniel participated in the Georgia State Constitutional Convention. After the passage of the Amnesty Act of July 1872, Southern men once again were able to hold political office. In October of that year McDaniel was elected as a Democrat from Walton County to be a representative in the General Assembly.
In October of 1874 he was elected to represent the 27th District (composed of Clarke, Oconee, Newton, Rockdale and Walton Counties) in the State Senate. McDaniel served three terms in the Senate initially as the Chairman of the Finance Committee. In 1877 he became the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In 1881 McDaniel chose to return home to Monroe and his law practice, and he did not run for re-election to the Senate.
"When Georgia Governor Alexander Stephens, former Vice President of the Confederacy, died in office in 1883, the President of the State Senate, James Boynton, became acting governor. Boynton immediately ordered a special election to fill Stephens' term. With the Democratic Party's nominating convention deadlocked between Boynton and A. O. Bacon, journalist Henry W. Grady proposed that a special committee select the nominee. Grady, the famed New South spokesman and managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution hoped to keep Bacon out of the office and pushed McDaniel's nomination. McDaniel became governor and was elected for a full term in his own right in 1884."
As governor, McDaniel worked to improve the state's finances by reducing Georgia's bonded debt, and by pushing industrialization. He was dedicated to furthering the "New South" and is credited with the establishment of state institutions for the deaf, the blind and the mentally ill. He also worked to help establish the Georgia School of Technology in Atlanta.
Another vote was held to try to get unanimity. All three Walton County delegates voted for secession. Only six of the 298 delegates refused to sign the document. The Convention adjourned on January 29th and reconvened on March 7 in Savannah to revise the State Constitution and to adopt the Confederate Constitution.