Rufus Brown Bullock was a Republican Party politician and businessman in Georgia. During the Reconstruction Era he served as the state's governor and called for equal economic opportunity and political rights for blacks and whites in Georgia. He also promoted public education for both, and encouraged railroads, banks, and industrial development. During his governorship he requested federal military help to ensure the rights of freedmen; this made him "the most hated man in the state", and he had to flee the state without completing his term. After returning to Georgia and being found "not guilty" of corruption charges, for three decades afterwards he was an esteemed private citizen.
Bullock served as the 46th Governor of Georgia from 1868 to 1871 during Reconstruction and was the first Republican governor of Georgia. After Georgia ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Omnibus Act declared that states were entitled to representation in Congress as one of the states of the Union. Georgia again lost the right to representation in Congress because the General Assembly expelled twenty-eight black members and prevented blacks from voting in the 1868 presidential election. In response to an appeal from Bullock, Georgia was again placed under military rule as part of the Georgia Act of December 22, 1869. This made Bullock a hated political figure. After various allegations of scandal and ridicule, in 1871 he was obliged by the Ku Klux Klan to resign the governorship, and felt it prudent to leave the state. He was succeeded by Republican State Senate president Benjamin Conley, who served as Governor for the two remaining months of the term to which Bullock had been elected. Conley was succeeded by James M. Smith, a Democrat, and no Republican would serve as governor of Georgia again until Sonny Perdue in 2003.
Bullock died in Albion, New York, in 1907 and was buried in Mt. Albion Cemetery nearby. Bullock has had both detractors and admirers. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, he was the last progressive governor of Georgia until Jimmy Carter. He is the only governor since 1850 of whom there is no portrait in the Georgia Capital.
In books
The novelGone With the Wind, by native GeorgianMargaret Mitchell, references the election of Rufus Bullock at the end of Part Four, calling it the end of a process of Northern subjugation of Georgia that had begun with Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864. In the novel, the Republicans win the election, utilizing voter fraud with the help of their Negro constituency. According to Mitchell, "The election had lasted three days instead of one. Trainloads of negroes had been rushed from town to town, voting at every precinct along the way. Of course, Bullock had won."
