Allen D. Candler
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Allen Daniel Candler (November 4, 1834 – October 26, 1910) was a Georgia state legislator, U.S. Representative and Georgia Governor.
Candler was born the eldest of twelve children in Auraria, Georgia, in Lumpkin County, a mountainous mining community. Candler attended country schools and then Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, graduating in 1859. Candler studied law briefly, and then taught school.
In May 1862, Candler enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army. He was immediately elected a first lieutenant by his comrades. Candler fought in some of the Civil War's most brutal battles: Vicksburg, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, and Jonesboro. By war's end, he was serving as a colonel under General Joseph E. Johnston in the Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. He was wounded at Kennesaw and lost an eye in Jonesboro. At the end of the war, he quipped that he was more fortunate than many—he still had one wife, one baby, one dollar, and one eye.
After the war, Candler settled in Jonesboro, Georgia, then Gainesville, Georgia. He turned to farming, then politics; he was one of many conservative Democrats pushing to wrest control of the state back from the Reconstruction Republican state government, which was backed by the occupying Union Army. In 1872, he was elected Mayor of Gainesville. In 1873, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving there until his election to the Georgia Senate in 1878, where he served just two years. During this time, Candler was also involved in manufacturing and was the president of a railroad.
In 1882, Candler was elected to the 48th Congress, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1883 to 1891. In his third term, he was the chairman of the Committee on Education. Candler declined to run again in the 1890 election. Candler served as Secretary of State of Georgia from 1894 to 1898 when he resigned and ran for Governor, winning with 70% of the vote against Populist candidate J. R. Hogan. Candler served two two-year terms as Governor from 1898 to 1902.
Candler was known as a conservative governor. While he established pensions for Confederate widows, he otherwise cut back both taxes and government expenditures. Candler pushed for the establishment of a whites-only Democratic primary based on the legal notion that the Democratic Party was a private organization and therefore not subject to the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment giving all Americans the right to vote, regardless of race. Since the Democratic Party had a monopoly on power in Southern states, the real selection of officeholders in Georgia occurred during the Democratic primary to select Democratic candidates for the fall general election. Democrats consistently won all of these offices the end of Reconstruction in 1871 until the 1970s.
After leaving the Governor's office, Candler served as the State's first compiler of records until his death in 1910 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Candler County, Georgia, was named in 1914 for Candler in appreciation for his passion and diligence in compiling and editing nearly thirty volumes of the State's historical records from the Colonial, Revolutionary and Confederate periods.
[edit] References
- Allen D. Candler at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Allen D. Candler at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- New Georgia Encyclopedia entry
- Governor Allen Daniel Candler: Confederate Colonel
| Preceded by Emory Speer |
U.S. Representative of Georgia's 9th District 1883 – 1891 |
Succeeded by Thomas E. Winn |
| Preceded by William Yates Atkinson |
Governor of Georgia 1898–1902 |
Succeeded by Joseph M. Terrell |
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