Charles Jones Jenkins was an American politician and jurist from Georgia. He is most noted for his defiance of military authority while governor of Reconstruction Georgia from 1865 to 1868.
Background
Jenkins was born on January 6, 1805, in Beaufort, South Carolina, United States. He was the only child of Charles Jones Jenkins, who was the ordinary of Beaufort district and had previously served as clerk of the court of common pleas. About 1816 the family moved to Jefferson County, Georgia.
Education
Young Jenkins was an earnest student and received the best educational advantages. He attended the famous school of Moses Waddell, whom he followed to Athens, Georgia, when Waddell became president of Franklin College (later the University of Georgia), completed his preparation there, and entered Franklin College. In February 1822 he took his dismissal in order to enter Union College at Schenectady, New York, where he graduated in 1824.
Jenkins read law with J. MacPherson Berrien and was admitted to the bar in April 1826. Beginning practice in Sandersville he was immediately successful.
In 1829 he moved to Augusta, where, in 1832, he joined the prosperous firm of Augustus B. Longstreet and William M. Mann. In 1830 he went to the lower house of the legislature from Richmond County and in 1831 was elected attorney general of the state. This office he soon resigned to seek reelection to the legislature but was twice defeated before his successful candidacy of 1836. With the exception of the term of 1842, he served continuously in the house from 1836 until his resignation in 1850, and during this time was the speaker of the house for four terms.
In September 1850 Fillmore offered him a position in the cabinet, but he declined.
In 1852 the Georgia Whigs bolted the Scott presidential ticket and voted for Webster, who had died in October, and Jenkins. A few days after the election Jenkins pronounced to the Whigs of Augusta a Eulogy on the Life and Services of Henry Clay (1853).
In 1853 he was the candidate of the Whig or "Union" party for governor but was defeated. Although he deprecated the drift toward secession he was removed from active politics by his appointment to the Georgia supreme court, on which he served during the entire war. He declined the presidency of the constitutional convention of 1865, charged with restoring Georgia to the Union, but, as chairman of the committee on business, he directed the difficult work of readjustment.
In November 1865 Jenkins was accorded the unique honor of a unanimous election as governor. In his inaugural address, he declared entire acceptance of the results of the war and pleaded for reconciliation. Within two years he virtually restored the credit of the state. He opposed the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. When the reconstruction acts of 1867 were passed he sought an injunction in the Supreme Court restraining Secretary Stanton from executing them, but the court declined to interfere. Because he refused to sign a warrant on the state treasury for the payment of the expenses of the reconstruction convention, he was removed by General Meade on January 13, 1868. Jenkins, on leaving the state, sequestered the executive documents, state money, and the executive seal, which were not restored until the Democratic governor James M. Smith took office in 1872. In appreciation, the state legislature presented Jenkins with a gold facsimile of the executive seal inscribed, "In Arduis Fidelis."
After some months in Canada and eighteen months' residence abroad, he had returned to Georgia late in 1870. He retired to his home at Summerville, near Augusta, and only returned to public life for brief service as president of the constitutional convention of 1877.
Achievements
Religion
Jenkins was a Presbyterian.
Politics
Charles launched his political career in 1830 with his election to the state legislature as a States' Rights Democrat. Later he became a Whig. Jenkins, in the state constitutional convention of 1850, wrote and championed the resolutions endorsing the compromise measures of 1850, commonly known as the Georgia platform, which declared southern cooperation with the federal government on issues related to the extension of slavery, in return for no northern violations of the compromise. The historian Fielder, a contemporary, called him the "Madison" of this convention.
Although Jenkins was a loyal Confederate, he considered secession a "blunder." His legal decisions during the war were landmark defenses of state sovereignty.
Connections
Jenkins was married twice: first, to Sarah Seaborn Rebecca Reed Jones and, after her death, to a daughter of Judge Barnes of Philadelphia, Emily Gertrude Barnes. He had three children from his first marriage.