USA > Georgia > Floyd County > Rome > A history of Rome and Floyd County, State of Georgia, United States of America; including numerous incidents of more than local interest, 1540-1922, Volume I > Part 9
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*Now in Meigs County, Tenn., 25 miles north of Blue Spring. He was trying to reach the latter after he was liberated, hoping to rejoin Ross.
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JOHN HOWARD PAYNE'S ARREST BY THE GEORGIA GUARD
Emissary. The most important step had been already taken. The minds of the country people had been fa- miliarized to the expectation of my being hanged, and they only waited for notice to assemble and enjoy the execution. The wife of a tavern keeper at Spring Place was reported to me by a traveller as having been heard to say I was a "very bad man," I was "sure to be hung," and one man had been hung thereabouts before for much less than I had done. I deserved the gallows and she herself would see me swinging with ' much pleasure-that she would, "wicked thing that I was!"
This may be taken, I presume, as a fair specimen of the sort of excite- ment which had been got up. Those best acquainted with the neighborhood and with the spirit prevailing looked upon my situation from the first as the more perilous of the two; but when I was found to have been detained after Mr. Ross, it was considered as altogether desperate. That this was no idle belief may be inferred from a fact of which I was afterward ad- vised. A paper, belonging, as I un- derstand, to a friend of Bishop in Cassville-the only paper of the re- gion through which it was my long avowed plan to return-had sent forth the following tissue of impudent false- hoods, during the earlier days of our captivity, and the poison had taken effect :
"Report," says the Cassville Pioneer of Nov. 13th, "has just reached us of the apprehension by the Georgia Guard of John Ross, together with a gentleman from the North. They were pursued by the soldiers stationed at Calhoun, Tenn., as far as the line of this state, where the chase was taken up by the Guard, who succeeded in overtaking them at an Indian's by the name of Sneaking Rabbit. The crime with which they are charged seems to be an effort, making by them, to arouse the Cherokees and negroes to the commission of hostilities on the white citizens of the Cherokee coun- try. If information be true, the pa- pers found in their possession go far to prove the hostility of their designs. Their communications had in a great measure been carried on in the French language. For want of a knowledge of that language, the Guard was un- able to comprehend fully their designs. Time alone can develop the truth of the report, but we trust for the peace of the community at large that it may
not prove as true as present appear- ances seem to indicate."
On discovering these reports, I felt some anxiety to examine the papers myself, wondering what could have created the French part of the charge. I looked among the manuscripts re- turned. The French papers which have puzzled the Captain, Colonel and the rest seem to have been these: numeration A table, in Cherokee, by George Gist, the native inventor of the Cherokee alphabet; a specimen of Gist's handwriting in Cherokee and in the characters he had invented; an ac- count of his life, also in the same lan- guage and characters, and written by his relation, George Lowry, second principal chief; and a literary com- position by Mr. Lowry, in Cherokee words, but English letters, which I preserved as a remarkable curiosity, because Mr. Lowry had never learned to read or write in any way, until after he had attained in age nearly half a century.
These were the French letters. This was the French plot. And I have rea- son to believe that in their eagerness to get some evidence against us the wiseacres by whom we had been kid- napped sent far across the country for some learned Theban to translate the aforesaid French out of the original Cherokee!
My other papers consisted of tran- scripts of public documents, a book of private memoranda, some specimen copy books from the Missionary School at Brainerd, appeals, the latter already mentioned and never printed, signed "Washington," and the address which I had drawn up for the Cherokee Na- tion to the people of the United States. The former of these was not returned to me. If stolen, I can not conjec- ture wherefor. If it had been re- turned, although the publication had not been intended, events would have induced me to have enabled the public to judge of it, as I now enable them to do of the other paper*, which was meant for circulation, and only re- strained by its seizure and our deten- tion from being sent round for sig- natures by all the people. My coun- trymen will find it annexed. It will show them how far my accusers have been justified in attempting my de- struction as an exciter of the Cher- okees to rise and murder the whites!
I must not omit here to mention that often and often since this affair have I blessed the chance which kept out of my reach any of these aboli-
*A long but harmless exhortation and appeal.
4
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A HISTORY OF ROME AND FLOYD COUNTY
tion pamphlets which have been so much talked about. I have never seen any and have had some desire to see one for I am in the habit of gather- ing scraps of that sort as curiosities, and if one had come in my way I should certainly have preserved it, as valuable for a future illustration of our times; and that would have sealed my fate, for had the slightest docu- ment of such a nature been discovered in my possession, no explanation could have saved me. A pretext, and not the truth, was wanted; and such an accident, and by no means an un- likely one, could ere this have cost my life upon a scaffold.
Before I close my list of escapes, let me mention one more. Mr. Ross had told me during our ride when first captured how glad he was of the pre- cautions which had been taken a long time before to prevent any resentment on the part of the Indians of any wrong whatever to their nation or its chiefs. Some indignity to him had long been expected and he felt satis- fied that the Cherokees would be dis- creet. I learned afterwards, however, that the indignation of some of them at this enormity almost overpowered the efforts of their leaders to keep them patient. Had they attacked the camp for our rescue I am convinced that as a first step of the defenders, we should have been shot. A scheme was also on foot, I have been told, in the bordering counties of Tennessee, to raise a force and bring us and the Guard back over the line, and there punish the intruders. This attempt would equally have exposed our lives, and in either case we should have been branded as having caused a civil war, and the first bloodshed might have been made an excuse to extermi- nate the Indians. In more than one instance during our imprisonment I remarked some uneasiness in the camp, but have only since learned whence it probably arose.
But to resume my story. I sent messenger across the forest to Red Clay, for the purpose of knowing what had become of Mr. Ross. With the messenger next day Mr. Ross and his Assistant Principal Chief* and Dr. Butler ** came to congratulate me on my escape. Of Dr. Butler I ought to make some special mention. He was one of those who had been imprisoned in the Georgia penitentiary under the famous attack upon the Missionaries. He had deeply felt my danger, had written to my friends, though a
stranger to them, in order that the result he secretly apprehended might not come upon their knowledge too suddenly, and had travelled a long road through a dreary night to seek influ- ence in my favor. His little family had implored Heaven for me with their prayers, and when I met them again, welcomed me with a touching enthu- siasm, which told the story of the peril I had escaped. t was when I went back with my visitors to the house of Mr. Ross that I saw them, and soon after, Mr. Ross and Mr. Lowry accompanied me as far as the agency. There the venerable Eena-tah-naah-eh, commonly called Going Snake, speaker of the Council, and one or two of its other members were in waiting to con- gratulate me. Old Eena-tah-naah-eh, though he could not speak a syllable of English, was eloquent with looks of joy. He had told Mr. Ross when he first called to see him after his eman- cipation, "It makes me happy to find you here. . But I am only half happy. I do not see our friend. I look at the chair where he used to sit, and it is empty. I look at the door and he does not enter. I listen for his voice, but all is silent."
On hearing I was to be at the agency, *** the old man hastened thither. There, too, the officers of the United States army hailed me with the cor- diality of compatriots and gentlemen, feeling that the republic had been in- sulted in the treatment I had received, spirit which appeared to prevail wherever I happened to pass people in my lonely ride to Knoxville, where I have had ample proof that Tennessee disdains the baseness of which I have been the victim within her sway.
It may be asked whence this high- handed outrage of which Mr. Ross and myself have been the victims arose. There must have been some cause for it. The only cause I can guess for it is this: There was a wish to get possession of certain documents re- garding the treaty discussions from Mr. Ross, which had been asked for by the government agents and not given. It was known that I had made copies of all the recent public docu- ments of the Cherokee nation. The seizure of the papers of both Mr. Ross and myself would probably supply all that had been asked. There was no
*George Lowrey.
** Rev. Elijah Butler, who had charge of Mis- sionary Station at Coosa, and who had spent a year and four months in the penitentiary at Milledgeville for "interfering" with the Indians. *** Calhoun, Tenn.
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JOHN HOWARD PAYNE'S ARREST BY THE GEORGIA GUARD
force sufficiently lawless to undertake this but the Georgia Guard. Having adventured on the step, it was re- quisite to invent a pretext, and to cover themselves from indignation by keeping us out of view until the coun- try could be excited against us. The mad-dog cry of the day is Abolitionist. That was the most obvious mode of strangling complaint against the in- jury, for it was the most certain to get the injured themselves strangled, and "dead men tell no tales." Besides, if a mob could be raised, mischief could be done without responsibility. In order to make "assurance doubly sure"* the slander was heightened by the imputations of a French and Indian, connected with a negro plot, for universal massacre. The scheme, how- ever, did not take the effect expected. Then was Mr. Ross set free, under the plea, probably, that he had more friends than I. He was even treated at the dismissal with a show of court- liness, that his story might discredit mine.
I was probably detained after him for two reasons. My papers contain- ed fair copies of all such among his as might be wanted. Mine were fair- ly written and arranged and could more easily be made use of by the transcriber. It was convenient to keep me until copies could be made of what- ever Cherokee documents the parties concerned might think useful.
The other reason appears very like- ly to have been this: Alone and a stranger in a strange place, I might be made the readier victim could a stir be raised against me, either with- in the camp or within the neighbor- hood. The frequent mention by the officers of my having "abused the guard" was intended to spirit them to do me an injury. I heard one of them intimate with some indignation one day that he himself so understood it. To them and to all, my continued imprisonment was doubtless meant to convey the idea of proven guilt. The mode of my dismissal was evidently intended to be understood as an en- couragement to any violence that the "boys" within might choose to perpe- trate, and the hostile pursuit by threats as an excitement to the "boys" with- out. By crushing me, my persecutors might crush a witness and prevent future inquiry. Perhaps I was only saved by taking a road which no one
* A favorite expression used by Woodrow Wilson.
** So far as is known, Ross remained silent.
expected I would take, though, in truth, as I said before, I think the "boys" considerably better than their leaders.
But whatever the pretext for this enormity, there can be no excuse. If my visit to the house of Mr. Ross was objected to by the government agents, a hint would have been enough. If doubt were entertained of the na- ture of my memoranda, a request would have opened them to examina- tion. Violence would have been early enough when a disposition had been shown to respect gentleness. But that I was really engaged in any plot of any sort, I am persuaded never was believed by those who have commit- ted this outrage. What could I gain by the Cherokees? Every moment that I have passed in their country has been a loss to me and an inconven- ience. Nothing which they can offer can render me services, and men do not contrive treason when they can gain no advantage. I have been swayed in the very little I have gathered re- garding the Cherokees by a pure and distinterested wish to render my own country service, in leading it to be simply just to theirs, and I have wish- ed to supply myself with such mate- rial that the fairness which it might be impossible for me to excite for them from present legislation, I might my- self bestow on them in future history. In party questions I take no interest. I repeat again and again that I have looked into this matter as a philan- thropist, not as a politician.
Mr. Ross will presently tell his own story .* His affairs have prevented him from joining me here in time to give it to the world with mine. I have wished to put my portion of the facts on record as speedily as possible, be- cause I am aware that great false- hood must be resorted to by my op- pressors in order to prevent public in- dignation against a great wrong. In- deed, with such foes and such modes as they adopt for gaining ends and such a long and lonely road to travel, who knows how soon the complainer may be yet silenced? It is but a week since I was a prisoner. But whatever may be the risk, I deem it a duty to my country not to shirk from speak- ing the entire truth.
People of Tennessee, to you I appeal ! I was a peaceful visitor to your state. I had dwelt in it some weeks. A band of armed men, who, in overpassing the limits of their own region, surely ren- dered themselves felons and banditti,
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A HISTORY OF ROME AND FLOYD COUNTY
burst into my retreat at midnight, dragged me four and twenty miles through a forest and during a drench- ing tempest. I was denied to com- municate with friends, with your gov- ernment, with our common protector, the President of the Union. I was denied a knowledge of the charge against me, or my accuser. After nearly two weeks of imprisonment I was insultingly and without examina- tion ordered back into Tennessee by the Captain of the outlaws who had laughed at your power of protection, your own chartered boundaries to scorn. People of Tennessee, will you bear these things? Will you see your hospitality thus dishonored? Will you know that the stranger who comes to visit you can not be safe, even in his blamelessness, from injury and in- sult within your domain?
People of Georgia, I appeal to you! I came among you as a fellow coun- tryman. I came to make myself ac- quainted with your history and your character and with the numberless natural beauties and with the count- less riches of your domain. I came under the guarantee of the compact between the sister states of the Re- public, which secures to the citizens of each unobstructed communication with all. I came relying upon the spirit of hospitality which has distin- guished the South. I have told you how I have been treated. If any mem- ber of the Republic has been especially remarkable for her resistance to the in- trusion of one state upon the rights of another, it is Georgia. How, then, can I believe that she will uphold her officers, who have in the most glar- ing and the coarsest manner been guilty of such an intrusion? I do not, therefore, identify the state with the
wrongs. I can not again enter the state until the people do the justice to tell me that I have judged them fairly in believing they feel themselves insulted by the insults which have been heaped in their name upon a neighboring power and upon the con- stitution, our common protector-in the person of a stranger, a country- man, a friend.
My fellow citizens throughout my native land! To all of you alike I appeal, for there is not one in our Republic to whom this case is not of vital import. It is not a party, but a universal question, and I doubt not
but that the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, whose government has been prophaned by being made by subal- terns to seem the source of the wrong, will be foremost in declaring this enormity. Insulting inquisitions, dom- iciliary visits, midnight intrusions into the sanctuary of homes, seizure by armed men of private papers, the im- prisonment and secreting of citizens, without the disclosure either of the charge or the accuser, contempt of the boundaries of the states, mockery of the hallowed privileges of the consti- tution-all these the worst deeds of the basest despotism have been per- petuated already in the instance now before you, and if you do not rise like men and declare such things shall not be suffered, not a citizen among you can say he sleeps in safety !
This is no idle declamation. It has happened to me and it may happen to any one of you. The Rubicon has been passed. But think of me, think of yourselves, think of those most dear to you, to whom you would bequeath the freedom you inherited. Not for personal chagrin, but for the honor of our country I will tell you, and oh! let not posterity echo the assertion as a prophecy, if tamely you look on and see these things, unmoved! I care not for proscriptions nor for bayonets ; neither the Guards of Georgia nor the denunciations of reckless and wily and insidious hirelings shall frighten me into silence; for I will tell you and with my last breath, if tamely you behold these things you are only slaves -heartless, abject slaves, and un- worthy of the immortal ancestors who bravely fought and nobly died to make their country free. But for this, I am satisfied, you will give no cause. The spirit of your fathers is not dead with- in you. My country will not see even the humblest of her sons oppressed.
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. Saturday, November, 1835 .**
*Evidently Nov. 28. Since he was released Friday, Nov. 20, he could not have reached Knoxville, 125 miles, in less than four days. Payne was born June 8, 1792, at 33 Pearl St., New York, N. Y., and died at 60 years of age Apr. 10, 1852, while serving as United States consul at Tunis, Morocco. He lay buried there until W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, D. C., brought his body back to his native land late in March, 1883, and reinterred it in George- town, a suburb of Washington. He corre- sponded with such literary lights as Washing- ton Irving (who also died a bachelor), Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Chas. Lamb, and roomed with Irving in Paris for a while.
CHAPTER IV Aftermath of the Payne-Ross Affair
T HE arrest of Payne and Ross stirred up a "hornet's LV: nest" in Georgia and Ten- nessee and to a less extent at Washington and throughout the country. Governor William Schley had just come into of- fice at Milledgeville as the suc- cessor of Wilson Lumpkin, and he was bombarded with protests. President Jackson was bombard- ed at Washington. A volunteer force of soldiers was organized in Tennessee to patrol "the border" and keep the rambunctious Geor- gians on their "own side." Con- gress and the Georgia Legislature prepared to review the case. The Georgia Guard began to "spew out."
Major Currey explained to Presi- dent Jackson through Elbert Her- ring, commissioner of Indian Af- fairs, and called Payne a prevari- cator. He was supposed to have ordered the arrest, or at least to have inspired it. Some said the order came from Milledgeville. Schermerhorn contended that he was at Tuscaloosa, Ala., when . he heard the news ; had nothing to do with it, but would have had Payne arrested had he known of his de- signs.
Two Indians from near Rome figured in the affair. Payne's ac- count mentions that one of them hung himself in the guard house at Spring Place, which became his own "home" for nearly a fortnight. Combatting Payne's statement that the Indian was driven to despera- tion by the Georgia Guard, Major Currey offered this explanation :
The Howling Wolf, charged with stabbing an Indian for supporting the treaty, and Lowny, or Robbin, charged with killing and robbing a white man, were being held at Spring Place. An old man named Trigg was arrested and confined with the Indians; he told them their own people would shoot them through the cracks of the cala- boose in the early morning. Lowny, or Robbin, tried to persuade the Howl- ing Wolf that they should hang them- selves. The latter refused, but the former committed suicide by hanging from a rafter with a small cord that had been tied loosely to his arms .*
The occurrence was well calcu- lated to inflame public opinion. John Ross knew this, and he tact- fully refrained from rushing into the discussion. Theodore Freling- huysen, Edward Everett, Jas. K. Polk, Jno. C. Calhoun, Sam Hous- ton, John Bell, Hugh Lawson White and other leading friends of the Indians took up the cudgels at Washington. Mr. Bell, who be- came the candidate of the Constitu- tional Union party for President in 1860 (with Mr. Everett in the minor position) undertook to bring about a Congressional in- vestigation.
The Georgia Journal, of Mil- ledgeville, a consistent opponent of Gov. Lumpkin and his "strong-arm gang," printed the following pro- test under date of Tuesday, Nov. 24, 1835 :
A rumor reached us sometime since of another outrage committed by the Georgia Guard. It was vague and uncertain, however, and as we did not wish to array in the catalogue of vio- lations of law committed by this arm- ed force a single outrage that was not stated on good authority, we hesitated to give it publicity. This rumor has proved true.
It seems that this Guard, under the command of one of the subalterns, crossed the line of the State and kid- napped from the State of Tennessee John Ross, the principal chief of the
*The Howling Wolf was of the Chickamauga District, which included part of Rome. He was no doubt identical with Crying Wolf. Robbin was a member of Challoogee district, which in- cluded half of Floyd County. Both attended the Running Waters council in July, and Robbin voted with the faction led by Ridge.
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A HISTORY OF ROME AND FLOYD COUNTY
A FEW THINGS THE INDIANS LEFT BEHIND.
Here is part of Wesley O. Connor's collection of relics at Cave Spring. These articles were mostly uncovered on the Moultrie farm, Foster's Bend, Coosa River, in the freshets of 1881 and 1886. Included among the more obvious articles are a bone necklace, Indian money, spear points and arrow heads, pipes, pestles and bits of pottery. The skulls are undoubtedly Indian.
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AFTERMATH OF THE PAYNE-ROSS AFFAIR
Cherokees. They also arrested John Howard Payne, a gentleman of great celebrity in the literary world.
The pitiful reason urged to palliate this gross enormity seems to have been that Mr. Payne
"was conspiring against the welfare of Georgia." Mr. Payne's real offense, in the eyes of these vandals, was his copying certain documents relative to the manners and customs of the Indian tribes, which their wiseacre of a leader construed to be high treason against the State.
It was indeed time that this scourge to the peaceful citizens of Murray County was removed; it is high time the military rule and despotism was made to give place to the authority of the laws. We should like to inquire of the Governor by what legal author- ity these arrests were made, and why on the receipt of information orders were not immediately given for the re- lease of the prisoners?
The officious members of this armed force ought to be made to smart in damages; an action on the case for il- legal arrest and false imprisonment will clearly be made against them .*
John H. Underwood, Rome gro- cer, who was a member of the Guard in the arrest, did not give any interviews to newspaper ed- itors, so all he observed is lost save what little he told Bill Arp, which is to be found elsewhere herein. But a number of others "writ upon time's immortal scroll."
Thatcher T. Payne, a brother of John Howard, penned the follow- ing letter :
** New York, N. Y., Nov. 27, 1835.
Hon. Lewis Cass,
Secretary of War,
Washington, D. C.
Sir: I have just received informa- tion that my brother, John Howard Payne, on the night of the 10th of November, *** inst., while in company with John Ross, the Cherokee chief, at his dwelling in the Cherokee nation,
*Payne's effort to have something definite done at Washington failed, and in a letter from New York to Gen. Harden at Athens in 1836, he said he would try to proceed against Col. Bishop, Major Currey and Sergt. Wilson Young.
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