 According to the "New Georgia Encyclopedia", he was the last progressive governor of Georgia until Jimmy Carter.He is the only governor since 1850 of whom there is no portrait in the Georgia Capital.The novel "Gone With the Wind", by native Georgian Margaret Mitchell, references the election of Rufus Bullock at the end of Part Four, calling it the end of a process of Northern subjugation of Georgia that had begun with Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864.