Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/73

 AUGUSTUS OCTAVIUS BACON

, of Macon, was born in Bryan County, Ga., October 20, 1839; received a high-school education in Liberty and Troup Counties; graduated at the University of Georgia, in the Literary and Classical Department in 1859, and in the Law Department in 1860; entered the Confederate army at the beginning of the war and served during the campaigns of 1861 and 1862 as adjutant of the Ninth Georgia Regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia; subsequently thereto was commissioned as captain in the provisional army of the Confederate States and assigned to general staff duty; at the close of the war resumed the study of law, and began practice in 1866 at Macon, from which date he has actively continued the same both in the State and Federal courts was; frequently a member of State Democratic conventions; was president of the State Democratic convention in 1880, and was delegate from the State at large to the national Democratic convention in Chicago in 1884; in 1868 he was elected presidential elector (Seymour and Blair) on the Democratic ticket; in 1871 was elected to the Georgia house of representatives, of which body he has served as a member for fourteen years; in this time, during two years he was the speaker pro tempore, and during eight years he was the speaker of the Georgia house of representatives; was several times a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia, and in the Democratic State convention of 1883 he came within one vote of a nomination for governor, when the nomination was equivalent to an election; was elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat, in November, 1894, for the term beginning March 4, 1895. His term of service will expire March 3, 1901.