[Joseph Emerson]. War governor of Georgia, born in Pickens County, SC, on the 15th of April 1821; graduated at Yale in 1846, and became a lawyer in Georgia. He was elected to the state senate in 1849, became judge in 1855, and was governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Governor Brown, who was an active secessionist, seized the United States forts and the arsenal at Augusta, GA. After the war he advised his state to accept the terms of reconstruction offered, and for a time he acted with the Republican party. He was defeated for United States Senator in 1868, and was appointed chief justice of the state supreme court in the same year. In 1872 he again joined the Democratic party, during the Greeley campaign; in 1880 he was elected United States Senator for the unexpired term of General Gordon, and was re-elected in 1884 for the term ending March 3, 1891. He donated $50,000 to the State University, and as much more to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, KY. He died on the 30th of November 1894, and left an estate valued at over $2,000,000.
