July 16, 1787

1787 Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia reached a critical day in the proceedings, which threatened to break up over the question of representation of states in the proposed national government. Days earlier, Georgia delegate Abraham Baldwin had played a pivotal role in arriving at a compromise where one house would be based on population and the other on equality of the states. The crucial July 16 debate ended with the compromise passing by a 5-4 vote. Interestingly, Georgia joined Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina in opposing the compromise. Massachusetts’ four delegates split evenly. But, North Carolina, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland voted in favor of what would become known as the "Great Compromise." A subsequent motion on July 17 to reconsider the vote failed to receive a second, so the July 16 vote stood.

July 16, 1787

1787 Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia reached a critical day in the proceedings, which threatened to break up over the question of representation of states in the proposed national government. Days earlier, Georgia delegate Abraham Baldwin had played a pivotal role in arriving at a compromise where one house would be based on population and the other on equality of the states. The crucial July 16 debate ended with the compromise passing by a 5-4 vote. Interestingly, Georgia joined Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina in opposing the compromise. Massachusetts’ four delegates split evenly. But, North Carolina, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland voted in favor of what would become known as the "Great Compromise." A subsequent motion on July 17 to reconsider the vote failed to receive a second, so the July 16 vote stood.

July 16, 1790

1790 Congress designated a new permanent capital for the United States to be named Washington, which would be located in an area carved from Virginia and Maryland to be known as the District of Columbia.

July 16, 1828

1828 Georgia politician William Few died in Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, New York. In 1973, his body was returned to Georgia, where he was reinterred on the grounds of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Augusta, with a marble monument marking his gravesite.

July 16, 1851

1851 Mildred Lewis Rutherford was born in Athens, Georgia. Niece of T.R.R. Cobb, she attended the Lucy Cobb Institute, a school for girls founded by Cobb in 1859. Age age 29, she returned to the institute as president, principal, and teacher. Never marrying, "Miss Millie" devoted the next 40 years of her life to giving young ladies a proper and "genteel" education.

Rutherford developed a second passion--vindicating the cause for which the Confederacy fought and telling the "truths" of history. One of her cardinal truths was that the War Between the States (as she insisted it must be called) was fought not over slavery but interference with states rights. As she explained, "slavery happened to be one of the state rights most interfered with."

Rutherford became historian-general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and was active in forty-nine different historic, patriotic, and other women’s organizations. A dynamic speaker, she went on a crusade across the nation giving speeches to women’s groups in 45 of the 48 states in the nation with titles such as "The Wrongs of History Righted" and "The Civilization of the Old South" Often for her speeches, she dressed in an antebellum-type dress she bought in Paris and powdered her hair. Rutherford died on Aug. 15, 1925.

July 16, 1905

1905 Former Confederate Gen. Bryan Morel Thomas died in Dalton, Ga. [See May 8 entry for biographical information on Thomas.]

July 16, 1914

1914 Six months after retiring as president of the Coca-Cola Co., Asa Candler sent his brother, Methodist bishop Warren Candler, the so-called "Million-Dollar Letter" -- a formal offer of a gift of $1,000,000 to create a new Methodist university in the East. Bishop Candler revealed the offer at a meeting of the church’s Educational Commission in Atlanta. Commission members immediately voted to accept the donation, chose Atlanta as the site, and named Bishop Candler as the first chancellor of what would become Emory University. The movement for a new Methodist university came after a March 1914 Tennessee court decision that Vanderbilt University was under the control of its board of Trustees -- not the Methodist Church.

July 16, 1963

1963 Georgia Congressman Carl Vinson broke Sam Rayburn’s record of service in Congress of 48 years, 8 months, and 12 days. Elected Nov. 3, 1914, he would be reelected for 26 consecutive terms. At the time of his retirement in January 1965, Carl Vinson had served 50 years and one month in Congress, a record that would last 3 decades until surpassed by Rep. Jamie Whitten of Mississippi on Jan. 6, 1992. Whitten would serve until 1994, retiring with a record 53 years of service in Congress.