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George W

George Walker Crawford (22 December 1798-27 July 1872) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-GA AL) from 7 January to 3 March 1843 (succeeding Richard W. Habersham and preceding Hugh A. Haralson), the Whig Governor of Georgia from 8 November 1843 to 3 November 1847 (succeeding Charles James McDonald and preceding George W. Towns), and the United States Secretary of War from 8 March 1849 to 23 July 1850 (succeeding William L. Marcy and preceding Charles Magill Conrad).

Biography[]

George Walker Crawford was born in Columbia County, Georgia in 1798, the cousin of William H. Crawford. He became a lawyer in 1822 and served in the state militia from 1824 to 1825, and he served as Attorney General of Georgia from 1827 to 1831. He shot Ambrose Burnside's uncle dead in a duel over Burnside's defamation of Crawford's father, but he made anonymous financial contributions to Burnside's wife and children to atone for his regrettable deed. He was elected to the state legislature in 1837 as a fiscally conservative Whig, and he filled a vacancy in the US House of Representatives in 1843 before serving as Governor from 1843 to 1847 and focusing on debt reduction, fiscal restraint, educational improvements, the establishment of the state Supreme Court, and investing in state railroads. He briefly served as President Zachary Taylor's Secretary of War before resigning upon Millard Fillmore's assumption of the presidency. In 1861, he served as president of his state's secession convention and authored its Ordinance of Secession. President Andrew Johnson accepted his direct application for amnesty on the end of the American Civil War, and he died in Augusta in 1872.

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