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Senate Years of Service: 1895-1914 Party: Democrat
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20130103155140im_/http://bioguide.congress.gov/bioguide/photo/B/B000014.jpg) |
Library of Congress |
BACON, Augustus Octavius, (cousin of William S. Howard),
a Senator from Georgia; born in Bryan County, Ga., October 20, 1839;
attended the common schools in Liberty and Troup Counties; graduated from the
literary department of the University of Georgia at Athens in 1859 and from its
law department in 1860; admitted to the bar in 1860 and commenced practice in
Atlanta, Ga.; entered the Confederate Army at the beginning of the Civil War
and served during the campaigns of 1861 and 1862 as adjutant of the Ninth
Georgia Regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia; subsequently commissioned
captain in the Provisional Army of the Confederacy and assigned to general
staff duty; at the close of the war resumed the practice of law in Macon, Ga.;
member of the State house of representatives 1871-1886, serving as speaker pro
tempore for two terms and as speaker eight years; president of the Democratic
State convention in 1880; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in
1894; reelected by state legislature in 1900, 1906, and became the first U.S.
Senator elected by popular vote following ratification of the 17th Amendment,
on July 15, 1913, and served from March 4, 1895, until his death; served as
President pro tempore during the Sixty-second Congress; chairman, Committee on
Engrossed Bills (Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses), Committee on Private
Land Claims (Sixty-first and Sixty-second Congresses), Committee on Foreign
Relations (Sixty-third Congress); died in Washington, D.C., February 14, 1914;
funeral services were held in the Senate Chamber; interment in Rose Hill
Cemetery, Macon, Ga.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography; Steelman, Lola
Carr. The Public Career of Augustus Bacon. Ph.D. dissertation, University of
North Carolina, 1950; U.S. Congress.
Memorial Addresses. 63rd Cong., 3rd sess., 1914-1915.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915.
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