Confederates at Georgia's Capitol

Why he's honored: Gordon was a three-star general in the Confederate army and one of Lee's top generals by the war's end. After the war, Gordon served as governor and U.S. senator and was one of the state's foremost political figures of the late 19th century.

What he stood for: Gordon was an unabashed white supremacist who historians generally acknowledge was titular head of the Ku Klux Klan in the state. At the very least, Gordon was an apologist for the Klan, which he referred to as a peace-loving "brotherhood" in testimony before Congress. He was a proponent of the New South credo, which pushed industrialization and minimized the South's racial problems.

What he said: "If you (freed slaves) are disposed to live in peace with the white people, they extend to you the hand of friendship. But if you attempt to inaugurate a war of races, you will be exterminated. The Saxon race was never created by Almighty God to be ruled by the African." Speech in Charleston, 1869.

Joseph Brown

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Brown was governor of Georgia during the Civil War. He also served as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and as a post-war U.S. senator.

What he stood for: Brown was a staunch defender of slavery and later of legal separation of the races. He also was a political realist and after the war won a presidential pardon by agreeing to support President Andrew Johnson's Radical Reconstruction plan. He eventually became very rich, in part because of his political connections.

What he said: "The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results. Our daily observation shows us, that the off-spring of these unnatural connections are generally sickly and effeminate, and that they are inferior in physical development and strength, to the full-blood of either race." Brown's legal opinion in Scott v. State.

Alexander Stephens 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Although considered a moderate on secession, Stephens was elected vice president of the Confederacy. After the war, Stephens was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1866, but the Senate refused to seat him. He later was elected and seated in the House. He also was elected governor, but died a few months into his term.

What he stood for: While considered a political moderate, Stephens was a firm defender of white supremacy and an apologist for slavery. He predicted the abolishment of slavery would spark a race war.

What he said: "Our new government is founded upon ... the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." The "Cornerstone" speech, 1861. (This speech is often cited as evidence that the Civil War was fought over slavery and not states' rights.)

NOTE: Another statue of Stephens is on display at the U.S. Capitol. Two of his descendants have requested that it be removed.

Robert Toombs 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Toombs served Georgia in public office for four decades, including stints in both the U.S. House and Senate. During the Civil War he served briefly as Confederate secretary of state before resigning to command a Georgia brigade.

What he stood for: Despite his earlier political attempts to prevent disunion, Toombs became a firm secessionist as a way to preserve slavery. His military service for the Confederacy ended when he resigned his commission after being passed over for a promotion. After the war, he spent two years abroad and refused to apply for a pardon from the federal government. He never regained his American citizenship. He was a major force in the state constitutional convention of 1877 that, among other things, gave segregation the power of law and established a poll tax designed to disenfranchise poor blacks.

What he said: "This is our question; we want no Negro equality, no Negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you on the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other."

Benjamin Hill 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Hill was a Confederate senator and ally of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he was elected to the U.S. House and later the Senate.

What he stood for: Hill was a moderate among Southern politicians, arguing for patience even after the election of Abraham Lincoln. However, he also was a defender of slavery and of social and political supremacy for Southern whites. When secession came, he backed Davis' nationalistic policies. Following the war he urged compliance with the reconstruction plans of President Andrew Johnson, taking on the "redeemer" Democrats in his own state.

What he said: "The Negro, of himself, can never make, administer or execute laws for the white man. His intellect is not equal to the task of either supremacy or equality. His taste, his habits, his nature can never, by any innate charm or power, rise to social equality with the white race." 1865

Wilson Lumpkin 

Why he's honored: Lumpkin served as governor, congressman and senator, as well as commissioner to the Cherokee Indians.

What he stood for: Lumpkin was a central figure in the removal of the Cherokee Indians from north Georgia along what would be called The Trail of Tears. Although a political moderate for his time and region, Lumpkin firmly believed whites and Native Americans could not coexist and threatened missionaries who opposed removal with arrest.

What he said: "It is the duty of the Federal Government to cooperate with the States in all just measures which may be calculated to speedily remove the evils of an Indian population from the States."

Alfred Colquitt 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Colquitt served as a brigadier general in the Confederate army. In politics, he served in the state Legislature and as a member of the U.S. House prior to the war. After the war, he served as governor and U.S. senator.

What he stood for: Prior to the war, Colquitt was active in the secession movement and an early volunteer for the Confederate Army. After the war, he was a major opponent of reconstructionist policies. Along with fellow "Bourbon" governors Gordon and Brown, Colquitt supported and personally profited off the expansion of a system of forced convict labor that had the effect of re-enslaving thousands of recently emancipated black Georgians.

Tom Watson 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Watson was elected to the state Legislature, the U.S. House and Senate, and was the vice presidential candidate for the Populist Party.

What he stood for: Initially a late 19th-century populist voice for disenfranchised farmers, black and white, Watson became a leading voice of white supremacism in the nation. His polemic attacks as publisher of a weekly newspaper are cited as a cause of the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906. He also attacked Catholics and Jews, including inflaming rhetoric during the trial of Leo Frank, who eventually was lynched by a white mob in 1915.

What he said: "The North can rail itself hoarse, if it chooses to do so: but if the L&N Railroad, the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Roman Catholic School-Book Trust, the Liquor Dealers' Association, and the Paul Warburg Money Trust, doesn't quit meddling with our business, increasing offices, raising taxes, and getting pardons and commutations for assassins, poisoners, and rapists who have a 'pull,' another Ku Klux Klan may be organized to restore Home Rule."

NOTE: A statue of Watson that stood on the steps in front of the Capitol was removed in 2013 and relocated across the street to Eugene Talmadge Plaza.

William Schley 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Schley served as governor and congressman in the 1830s.

What he stood for: Schley supported the removal of Native Americans by federal intervention. He also was an ardent opponent of abolitionists and fought repeatedly with officials in Maine, demanding the return of fugitive slaves and the extradition to Georgia of those who helped them escape. He offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest of abolitionist publisher William Lloyd Garrison. As governor he also pushed for smallpox vaccinations, rail development, improvements in the state insane asylum and the creation of a state supreme court.

What he said: "The Indians must now be conquered and sent to the West at the point of a bayonet."

James Milton Smith 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Smith, a colonel in the Confederate army and later a Confederate congressman, was elected governor in 1871 following the ouster of Republican Gov. Rufus Bullock. Smith's election began more than a century of Democratic rule in Georgia.

What he stood for: Smith was a "Redeemer" Democrat, anxious to turn back changes instituted under Reconstruction and reinstitute white rule. As governor, he instituted the controversial convict-lease system, which rented convicts - most of them black - to business interests, such as the railroads. He also founded the state Department of Agriculture and tackled a difficult state budget deficit.

What he said: "I come in response to the call of the people of my native state, a people who, having been scourged by fire and sword, have had their patience still more severely tried by want of integrity in office and by corruption in high places."

Henry Dickerson McDaniel 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: McDaniel served as a state lawmaker and also as governor from 1883 to 1886. Prior to that he was a major in the Confederate army.

What he stood for: Prior to the Civil War, McDaniel opposed secession. Following Reconstruction, he was an adherent to the New South creed, promoting industrial expansion and minimizing the region's civil rights issues. His tenure as governor was relatively quiet. He oversaw the construction of the state Capitol and the establishment of Georgia Tech, and he enlarged the state's mental asylum. He endorsed the convict-lease system.

Allen Daniel Candler 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Candler was the last Civil War veteran to be governor of Georgia. He was wounded several times, ending the war with the rank of colonel. He was a state lawmaker, congressman, and Georgia secretary of state prior to his election as governor in 1898.

What he stood for: Candler was an ardent critic of federal reconstruction policies. He promoted an all-white Democratic primary as a way of nullifying the black vote. He reduced state services for poor whites and blacks. He is credited with pushing to preserve historical state documents from the colonial and revolutionary periods through the Civil War.

What he said: "Before the ballot was thrust into the hands of the Negro unprepared for it and utterly ignorant of its sanctity and of the responsibilities of citizenship notwithstanding he was a slave, he was happy and well contented to occupy that subordinate place in society, to which his nature and his condition assigned him." Newspaper column, 1898

Clifford Walker 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Walker was governor from 1923 to 1927. Prior to that, he served as mayor of Monroe and state attorney general.

What he stood for: Walker is best remembered for his ties to the Ku Klux Klan, then a powerful voice in state politics. Walker spoke at a national Klan convention and consulted with Klan leaders on policy issues.

Howell Cobb 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Cobb served as a congressman, speaker of the U.S. House, secretary of the treasury, governor, president of the Provisional Confederate Congress and a major general in the Confederate army.

What he stood for: A powerful political figure throughout much of the 19th century, Cobb was a firm defender of slavery but sought to maintain the Union, helping to broker the Compromise of 1850.

What he said: "Mr. Lincoln and his party assert that this doctrine of equality applies to the Negro and necessarily there can exist no such thing as property in our equals." 1860

George Troup 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Troup served as governor from 1823-1827. He also was a state lawmaker, U.S. representative and senator.

What he stood for: Troup is remembered for his efforts in removing the Creek Indians from Georgia, sometimes in conflict with federal policy.

What he said: "I sincerely trust, if these infuriated monsters (Creek Indians) shall have the temerity to set foot within our settled limits, you may have the opportunity to give them the bayonet freely, the instrument which they most dread, and which is most appropriate to the occasion." Letter to the commander in chief of the Georgia militia.

Hoke Smith 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: A publisher of The Atlanta Journal, Smith served as U.S. secretary of the interior under President Grover Cleveland, and then as governor from 1907-1909 and again in 1911, before moving to the U.S. Senate, where he served for a decade.

What he stood for: A white supremacist, Smith campaigned for governor on the promise of further restricting the black vote, which he accomplished through the adoption of the so-called "grandfather clause" to the state constitution, which denied the vote to any Georgian whose grandfather was not eligible to vote. He also ended the convict-lease system, created the juvenile court system, reduced the work week of textile workers to 60 hours and established the Department of Commerce.

What he said: "I believe that it is a mistake for the Negro to seek in any way to force himself into competition with the white man. His history and the history of his race should make sympathizers hesitate about urging him to such a course. In Georgia there are more Negros than in any other state in the Union. We find that, with few exceptions, they succeed only in the simpler walks of life, and there only when they receive the benefit of kindly direction from the white man."

Charles Jones Jenkins 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Jenkins was governor from 1865-1868. He also served in the state Legislature and as state attorney general. During the Civil War, he was a judge on the Georgia Supreme Court.

What he stood for: As governor, Jenkins put the bankrupt state back on solid financial footing. He also flouted federal authority, advising the Legislature not to ratify the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing the rights of former slaves. He feuded with Gen. George Meade, the federal military commander of the state during Reconstruction. When Meade had him removed from office, Jenkins fled the state, taking with him the seal of the governor's office.

What he said: "The State of Georgia in the judgment of this Convention, will and ought to resist even (as a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union, any action of Congress upon the subject of slavery." The Georgia Platform, 1850

Herschel Johnson 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Johnson served briefly as a U.S. senator and was twice elected governor prior to the Civil War. A moderate on secession, he was Stephen Douglas' vice presidential candidate in 1860. During the war, he served as a Confederate senator. In the post-war period he was elected to the U.S. Senate again, but was not seated.

What he stood for: Early in his career, Johnson was a vocal secessionist, but became more moderate the longer he was in politics. As governor, he urged the state to remain in the Union, in part because he believed remaining in the Union would protect slavery.

What he said: "The interests of slavery and those of cotton, rice and sugar are identical and must share the same fate, and therefore, at least the states engaged in these products should be united in measures of redress or future security ... Indeed, I am frank to say, that I would not dissolve this Union, by secession or otherwise, for what has already been done, if any assurance can be obtained from the North that they will cease their aggressions and permit us to remain quietly in the Union."

Robert E. Lee 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Lee was the commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia and general-in-chief of all Confederate forces.

What he stood for: Lee is broadly appreciated for his military tactics, but also for his attitude of reconciliation following the Civil War. After the war, he took the required loyalty oath and received a presidential pardon. He served as college president in Virginia from 1865 until his death. While Lee has become a symbol of an honorable South, he also opposed giving the vote to freed slaves and believed in the social and political supremacy of the white race.

What he said: "I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained."

Richard Russell 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Russell was a titanic figure in 20th-century Georgia politics, serving as speaker of the Georgia House and governor from 1931 to 1933. But he is best known for serving as a U.S. senator through five decades, dying in office in 1971.

What he stood for: Russell was a strong supporter of agriculture and military affairs, both of which benefited Georgia. President Johnson called on him personally to serve on the Warren Commission following the assassination of President Kennedy. He also was a staunch supporter of segregation and white supremacy, blocking anti-lynching and voting rights legislation through the use of filibusters and parliamentary procedures. However, once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, he urged his Southern colleagues to comply and not resist its implementation.

What he said: "As one who was born and reared in the atmosphere of the Old South, with six generations of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and ensure white supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of our state as any man who lives within her orders."

Eugene Talmadge 

Credit: Chris Hunt

Credit: Chris Hunt

Why he's honored: Talmadge served three terms as governor from 1933-37 and 1941-43, and was elected to a fourth term in 1946 but died before he could take office. He also served three terms from 1927-33 as state agriculture commissioner.

What he stood for: Talmadge was a populist campaigner and a dictatorial executive, breaking up boards and removing appointees to get his way. He waged a racially inflamed political war on the University System in what is known as the Cocking Affair, named after the dean of the University of Georgia's College of Education, whom Talmadge accused of advocating limited integration. He used his stance on racial segregation as an effective campaigning tool, smearing opponents as soft on white supremacy.

What he said: "Wise Negroes will stay away from the white folk's ballot boxes on July 17. We are the true friends of the Negroes, always have been, and always will be as long as they stay in the definite place we have provided for them." - AP, July 11, 1946

Herman Talmadge 

Why he's honored: Son of Eugene Talmadge, Herman Talmadge served as governor, including a brief stint during the "Three Governors Crisis," but his greatest mark was made in the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1956 to 1980.

What he stood for: Talmadge was part of a Southern bloc of senators who tried to slow the progress of desegregation and voting rights legislation. A powerful ally of farmers, Talmadge sponsored the bill to create the food stamps program, which helped the poor and farmers alike. He also favored commodity subsidies for crops such as peanuts. He was an admitted alcoholic who was censured in the Senate for charging inappropriate reimbursement of $43,000 in expenses not incurred.

What he said: "Georgians accept the challenge and will not tolerate the mixing of the races in the public schools or any of its public tax-supported institutions. The fact that the high tribunal has seen fit to proclaim its views on sociology as law will not make any difference." In response to the Brown v. Board decisions in 1954, The Atlanta-Constitution, May 18, 1954.

Lester Maddox 

Credit: RICH ADDICKS

Credit: RICH ADDICKS

Why he's honored: Maddox served as governor from 1967-1971 and followed with a term as lieutenant governor.

What he stood for: Maddox rose to power as a symbol of white resistance to desegregation. As owner of the Pickrick Cafeteria in Atlanta, he famously turned back civil rights activists attempting to integrate his business by wielding an ax handle at them. As governor he was more moderate on racial issues, appointing more African-Americans than all prior governors combined. His appointments included the first black state patrol officer and first black member to the state Board of Corrections. He refused to lower state flags following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and continued to fight civil rights legislation on a national level.

What he said: "That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity."