UPSON COUNTY, GA - BIOS Alexander, Peter Wellington ***************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm *********************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: David E. Paterson Published in UHS Newsletter Aug, Sept, Oct 1998 Lawyer, Journalist, and War Correspondent Readers will remember that David is the author of A Frontier Link with the World: Upson's County's Railroad. Peter Wellington Alexander: Many students of Upson County his-tory know the name Peter Wellington Alexander. Nationally, he is best known as a superb Southern newspaper correspondent during the Civil War; but, apart from this journalistic work, he made significant contributions to the development of Upson County. Although neither born nor buried in Upson, nevertheless, for about fourteen years between 1844 and 1866 he was one of Thomaston's most influential and useful citizens P. W. Alexander was born in Ruckersville, Georgia. He attended University of Georgia, where he carefully honed his skills in English composition, meticulous to the point of writing two drafts of each essay before submitting a third, polished version to his profes sors. His academic efforts earned him second highest standing in the class of 1844. After graduation, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Thomaston. He was a member of the Whig Party, which advocated a program of national improvements, such as roads, canals, and schools. We find him active in Whig politics, acting as secretary for various Upson County political meetings as early as 1846. Alexander used his writing talents to champion the Whig cause in the press. Such were his abilities that he was hired as editor-in-chief of the Savannah Republican (the state's leading Whig party paper) from 1853 to 1857 After the disintegration of the Whig Party, Alexander returned to Thomas-ton to continue practicing law. A bachelor, he boarded at B. B. White's house, (now preserved as the Pettigrew-White-Stamps House). True to his political beliefs, he supported initiatives to promote local infrastructure. He was a prominent advocate for the Thomaston & Bamesville Railroad (although never a stockholder). Promoting public education in Upson County, he accepted appointment as an "examiner of teachers" for Upson beginning in 1858, and served as county school commissioner in 1860. Political turmoil on the eve of civil war, however, interrupted these more peaceable pursuits. He was one of three Upson men elected to the State Convention which, on January 19, 1861, voted to secede from the Union. Although the Upson delegates opposed secession, they changed their votes when the outcome became clear, so that the Convention could announce a unanimous decision. Alexander signed Georgia's Ordinance of Secession on January 29,1861. Next, he hurried to Montgomery, Alabama, to attend the Convention con-vened in February 1861 to construct a new national government for the seceded states. When the flag committee approved the design for a Confederate national flag, Alexander dashed off a letter to Miss Loula Kendall (daughter of Dr. David Kendall, a leading Upson citizen and physician) describing the new flag. Miss Kendall sewed a flag to this pattern - in her words, "a broad white bar between two of red the same width, and seven stars for the seven seceded states" - which she later claimed to be the first Confederate flag made in Georgia. (A second flag she later made and presented to her sweetheart, Sgt. J. H. Rogers, of the Upson Guards still exists in private hands.) On April 12-13, 1861, in the first military action of the Civil War, Confederates bombarded and forced the surrender of Fort Sumter (a U. S. fort situated in Charleston harbor). A colorful Upson tale says that P. W. Alexander retrieved the first cannon ball fired in the Civil War from the mud in front of the fort, and brought it back to the B. B. White family in Thomaston. The story maintains that this relic served as a door- stop at the house, or lay under the porch, for several decades before being elevated to the marble pedestal on which it graces Thomaston's courthouse square today. About a week after Fort Sumter's surrender, P. W. Alexander was back in Upson County, helping to recruit a military company for the Confederacy; but, rather than enlist as a soldier himself, he signed on with the Savannah Republican as a war correspondent. During the next four years, often using the by-line "P.W.A.", he reported from the battlefront to that paper, and to the Atlanta Confederacy, the Columbus Sun, the Mobile Advertiser and Register, the Richmond Dispatch, and even the Lon-don Times. Called by one newspaper "the Prince of Correspondents," he was, by any standard, one of the two top Southern reporters of that bloody conflict. In The South Reports the Civil War, S. Cutler Andrews lists the strengths which characterized P. W. Alexander's reports: his integrity and courage to report the war as he saw it, his descriptive ability which enabled readers to comprehend complicated battlefield maneuvers, his dramatic quality, and "his skill in achieving panoramic effects" combined with "an interest in the common soldier (not unlike that of World War II reporter Ernie Pyle), which caused [him] to be idolized by Southern soldiers and civilians." After the war, he returned again to his law practice in Thomaston. During this period of anxiety and unrest in the wake of Emancipation, Alexander appears to have exerted a moderating influence on his fellow-citizens, and occasionally acted as an advocate to the Freedmen's Bureau (the U. S. Army agency charged with effecting Reconstruction in Georgia) on behalf of freedpeople who sought his assistance. Peter W. Alexander was one of five speakers at the first anniversary Emancipation Celebration on May 29, 1866. In the fall of 1866, Alexander left Upson County with his partner, James M. Smith, to practice law in Columbus, Georgia. I have seen no evidence that he ever returned to Upson. Beyond his connection with romantic relics of the Civil War, Alexander's legacy to Upson County includes his influence as a progressive voice calling for a well-founded public education system. His integrity and sense of fair play for all people of the county united him with like-minded persons of good will whose influence guided Upson County through the rocky first days of Reconstruction, thus avoiding the anarchy and violence which characterized that period in some other parts of the state. Peter Wellington Alexander died in 1886. Photograph of P. W. Alexander is from J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (copyright 1970), used by kind permission of Princeton University Press. Selected Sources: J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton University Press, 1970) Nottingham & Hannah, History of Upson County (WO) Thomaston Upson County Sesquicentennial Committee, Sesquicenteiniicil [1975?] Loula Kendall Rogers, "At Length Came the War" (undated ms., Upson chapter, U.D.C., scrap book) David E. Paterson, The Freer/men's Bu-reau in Upson County, ] 865-69 (1995)