George W. Towns

George Washington Bonaparte Towns ( born May 4, 1801 Wilkes County, Georgia; † July 15, 1854 in Macon, Georgia ) was an American politician and Governor of the State of Georgia, which he also represented in Congress.

Background and education

Georgetown was the son of an immigrant from Virginia to Georgia family. After primary school the young George first began to study medicine in Eatontown. An injury put an end to this study and George moved to Montgomery (Alabama ). There he acquired a tavern and studied law. In 1824 he was admitted to the bar there. He practiced first in Montgomery and then in Talbotton (Georgia ).

Political rise

In Talbotton he summed up very fast feet and was colonel of the local militia. In 1829 he was elected to the House of Representatives from Georgia; 1832-1834 he was a state senator. At this time he was a loyal supporter of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. He declared himself the enemy of John C. Calhoun and gave all separatist movements in Georgia a rejection. After his election to the U.S. House of Representatives where he took his seat in 1835. In September 1836 he joined surprising return of this mandate. The reason he gave for not wanting to fall in the event of a deadlock in the upcoming presidential election in a quandary if the Congress had to elect the president and he had to choose an opposing candidate due to political constraints. This happened in 1836 not one. Martin Van Buren was elected with a clear majority for the president, but Towns had lost his seat in Congress. His successor was Julius Caesar Alford things, a candidate of the opposition Whigs. His resignation cost him in Georgia much sympathy among the supporters of the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, he managed to jump again in 1837 in the Congress.

Policy U-turn

In the following two years now in the House of Representatives Towns took a fundamental change of attitude. Until that time he had always supported the federal government in Washington and had entered against all separatist aspirations of the individual states. Now he turned more and more from that position and became increasingly an advocate for the rights of individual states to the federal government. In 1839 he retired temporarily from politics and practiced as a lawyer again in Talbotton. But in 1846 he returned to Congress to Washington. Here he supported, like most Southerners, the expansion policy of President James K. Polk.

Governor of Georgia

1847 Towns ran for governor of Georgia. During the election campaign he praised President Polk's expansionist policies, saying, as most politicians of the South, against the so-called Wilmot Proviso from. This provided for a prohibition of slavery in the newly acquired areas of the U.S.. With the support of the radical Southerners Towns abolished the election, and two years later also the leap into a second term. During his tenure as governor, he joined now opted for the positions of the southern states, including slavery, a. He also promoted the development of the railway network of the Western and Atlantic Railroad in Georgia. He built from the health care and reformed the prison system. Finally, he appointed a commission with the planning of free public schools.

But above all was his conservative stance on the issue of slavery. The Compromise of 1850, he resolutely rejected. In December 1850 he called a meeting in Georgia to have a about a spin-off of the country decided by the Union. He saw the federal government in Washington as an instrument of the Northern states and abolitionists who had only the destruction of the southern states in mind. At the meeting but his proposal was no majority: Georgia remained in the Union, and even supported the Compromise of 1850, this result was a bitter political defeat for Towns. . His radical positions on this issue were not yet the support of his countrymen at that time. Ten years later, however, Georgia closed but then the other southern states and left the Union, which then led to the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Evening of life and death

After the end of his term in 1851 Towns moved to Macon and began its operations as a lawyer again. At the same time he operated a large cotton plantation with more than 50 slaves. Since 1852 he has been severely disabled by a paralytic disease. He died in July 1854 in Macon.

Since 1837 he was married to his second wife Mary Jones Towns. The couple had five daughters and two sons. His first wife Margaret Jane Campbell died in 1826 just a few weeks after the wedding.