Allen D . Candler Allen Daniel Candler ( November 4 , 1834 – October 26 , 1910 ) was a Georgia state legislator , U . S . Representative and the 56th Governor of Georgia . Biography . Candler was born the eldest of twelve children to Daniel Gill Candler and Nancy Caroline Matthews in Auraria , Georgia , in Lumpkin County , a mountainous mining community . Candler attended country schools and then Mercer University in Macon , Georgia , graduating in 1859 . Candler studied law briefly , and then taught school . In May 1862 , Candler enlisted as a private in the 34th Georgia Volunteer Infantry where he was immediately elected a first lieutenant by his comrades . Candler fought in some of the Civil War ' s most brutal battles : Vicksburg , Missionary Ridge , Resaca , Kennesaw Mountain , Atlanta , and Jonesboro . By war ' s end , he was serving as a colonel under General Joseph E . Johnston in the Army of Tennessee in North Carolina . He was wounded at Kennesaw and lost an eye in Jonesboro . At the end of the war , he quipped that he was more fortunate than many — he still had one wife , one baby , one dollar , and one eye . After the war , Candler settled in Jonesboro , Georgia , then Gainesville , Georgia . He turned to farming , then politics ; he was one of many conservative Democrats pushing to wrest control of the state back from the Reconstruction Republican state government , which was backed by the occupying Union Army . In 1872 , he was elected Mayor of Gainesville . In 1873 , he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives , serving there until his election to the Georgia Senate in 1878 , where he served just two years . During this time , Candler was also involved in manufacturing and was the president of a railroad . In 1882 , Candler was elected to the 48th Congress , serving in the U . S . House of Representatives from 1883 to 1891 . In his third term , he was the chairman of the Committee on Education . Candler declined to run again in the 1890 election . Candler served as Secretary of State of Georgia from 1894 to 1898 before resigning to pursue the Governorship . Campaigning as the " one - eyed ploughboy from Pigeon Roost " he won with 70 % of the vote against Populist candidate J . R . Hogan . Candler served two two - year terms as Governor from 1898 to 1902 . Candler was known as a conservative governor . While he established pensions for Confederate widows , he otherwise cut back both taxes and government expenditures . Candler pushed for the establishment of a whites - only Democratic primary based on the legal notion that the Democratic Party was a private organization and therefore not subject to the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment giving all Americans the right to vote , regardless of race . Since the Democratic Party had a monopoly on power in Southern states , the real selection of officeholders in Georgia occurred during the Democratic primary to select Democratic candidates for the fall general election . Democrats consistently won all of these offices from the end of Reconstruction in 1871 until the 1970s . Candler ' s tenure as governor coincided with some of the most violent lynchings in Georgia ' s history . Although he publicly denounced mob violence , at the same time he blamed the victims of these incidents on black criminality and the increasing annoyance among whites of blacks demanding equal treatment . In an incident which culminated with the notorious lynching of Sam Hose in 1899 , he berated the " better class " of blacks for not aiding authorities in his apprehension . These views were prominently printed in the Atlanta newspapers alongside those of the editors which urged the mobs on . Candler did ask the courts for speedier trials to head - off mob violence , and even admonished white women for not curtailing this blood - thirsty tendency in their men . After leaving the Governor ' s office , Candler served as the State ' s first compiler of records until his death in 1910 in Atlanta , Georgia . Candler County , Georgia , was named in 1914 for Candler in appreciation for his passion and diligence in compiling and editing nearly thirty volumes of the State ' s historical records from the Colonial , Revolutionary and Confederate periods .