USA > Georgia > A standard history of Georgia and Georgians > Part 44
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7. Bacon, created by legislative act, during the session of 1914, in honor of the late United States Senator Augustus O. Bacon, whose parents repose in the little cemetery adjacent to Midway Church.
HEARD'S FORT .- According to the local historian of Wilkes, the first settlement on the site of the Town of Washington was made by a colony of immigrants from Westmoreland County, Virginia, headed by Stephen Heard, a pioneer who afterwards rose to high prominence in public affairs. Two brothers accompanied him to Georgia, Barnard and Jesse, and possibly his father, John Heard, was also among the colonists. It is certain that the party included Benjamin Wilkinson, together with others whose names are no longer of record. They arrived on December 31, 1773, and, on New Year's day following, in the midst of an unbroken forest of magnificent oaks, they began to build a stockade fort, which they called Fort Heard, to protect the settle- ment from Indian assaults.
The Heards were of English stock but possessed landed estates in Ireland. It is said of John Heard that he was a man of explosive temper, due to his somewhat aristocratic blood and that, growing out of a difficulty over tithes, in which he used a pitch-fork on a minister of the Established Church, he somewhat hastily resolved upon an ocean voyage, in order to escape the consequences.
Between the Indians and the Tories, the little colony at Heard's Fort was sorely harassed during the Revolutionary war period. There were many wantou acts of cruelty committed when the tide of British success in Georgia was at the flood. Stephen Heard's young wife, with a babe at her breast, was at this time driven out in a snow storm, to perish without a shelter over her head. His brother, Maj. Bernard Heard, was put into irons, taken to Augusta, and sentenced to be hanged, but fortunately on the eve of the siege he made his escape, and took an active part in the events which followed. It is said that among the prisoners rescued from the
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hands of the British was his father, John Heard, an old man, who was on the point of exhaustion from hunger.
In the spring of 1780 Heard's Fort became temporarily the seat of the state government in Georgia. Stephen Heard was at this time a member of the executive council; and when Governor Howley left the state to attend the Continental Congress, George Wells as president of the executive council succeeded him, while Stephen Heard succeeded George Wells. The latter fell soon afterwards in a duel with James Jack- son, whereupon Stephen Heard, by virtue of his office, assumed the direction of affairs. It was a period of great upheaval; and, to insure a place of safety for the law-making power when Angusta was threatened, Stephen Heard transferred the seat of government to Heard's Fort, in the County of Wilkes, where it remained until Augusta was retaken by the Americans.
On the traditional site of Heard's Fort was built the famous old Heard Honse, which was owned and occupied for years by Gen. B. W. Heard, a descendant of Jesse Heard, one of the original pioneers. It stood on the north side of the court- honse square, where it was afterwards used as a bank and where, on May 5, 1865, was held the last meeting of the Confederate cabinet. Thus an additional wealth of memories was bequeathed to Heard's Fort, an asylum for two separate govern- ments pursued by enemies.
On April 25, 1779, the first court held in the up-country north of Augusta was held at Heard's Fort. There were three justices: Absalom Bedell, Benjamin Catch- ings and William Downs. To this mimber Zachariah Lamar aud James Gorman were subsequently added. Col. John Dooly was attorney for the state. Joseph Scott Redden was sheriff, and Henry Manadue, clerk of the court. For several years the tribunal of justice was quartered in private dwellings. It was not until 1783 or later that the county boasted a jail, and, during this period, prisoners were often tied with hickory withes, or fastened by the neck between fence rails. Juries often sat on logs out of doors while deliberating upon verdiets. It is said that when Tories were indicted, even on misdemeanors, they seldom escaped the hemp. Says Doctor Smith: * "Even after the war, when a man who was accused of stealing a horse from General Clarke was acquitted, by the jury, the old soldier arrested him and marched him to a convenient tree and was about to hang him anyhow, when Nathaniel Pendleton, a distinguished lawyer, succeeded in begging him off."
WASHINGTON .- On the site of Fort Heard arose iu 1780 the present town of Washington: the first town in the United States to be named for the commander-in- chief of the American armies in the Revolution. It was not until 1783 that Wash- ington was formally laid off; but the records show that during the year mentioned it took the name of the illustrious soldier. Next in point of age to Washington, Georgia, comes Washington, North Carolina, a town which was founded in 1782, two full years later.
* "The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People," by Dr. George G. Smith, pp. 137-138, Atlanta, 1900.
CHAPTER V
SAVANNAH'S REVOLUTIONARY MONUMENTS-THE GREENE MONUMENT IN JOHNSON SQUARE-THE PULASKI MONUMENT IN CHIPPEWA SQUARE- THE BRONZE STATUE OF SERGEANT JASPER IN MADISON SQUARE- THE SPRING HILL REDOUBT-JASPER SPRING.
During the visit of General Lafayette to Savannah, in 1825, the old palladin of liberty was asked to take part in laying the corner- stones of two monuments to be erected in the "Forest City," one to the memory of Gen. Nathanael Greene, in Johnson Square, and one to the memory of Count Pulaski, in Chippewa Square. He yielded assent; and on March 21, 1825, the corner-stones were duly laid in the places designated, General Lafayette acting in association with the Masonic lodges. Subsequently donations were received for the ereetion of these monuments. The sum desired was $35,000, for the raising of which the Legislature authorized a lottery; but the enterprise langnishing after a few years it was decided to erect only one shaft, to be dedicated in common to the two illustrious heroes.
Accordingly, the first monument erected, a shaft of granite, fifty feet in height, was called the "Greene and Pulaski" monument, and for twenty-five years it continued to honor the two heroes jointly, though it bore no inscription. Finally, in 1853. funds having been raised suf- ficient to carry out the original plan, the monnment in Johnson Square became the "Greene" monument, and a shaft to Count Pulaski was erected elsewhere. However, it was not until 1885 that it bore an inscription. The Georgia Historical Society then took the matter in hand, and, with the aid of the eity authorities, raised the money needed for the tablets. Both made of bronze, the one on the south side por- trays, in bas relief, the full length figure of General Greene, while the one on the north side reads thus:
"Major-General Nathanael Greene, born in Rhode Island, 1742, died in Georgia, 1786. Soldier, patriot, and friend of Washington. This shaft has been reared by the people of Savannah in honor of his great services to the American Revolution."
On November 14, 1902, the remains of General Greene having been found in the Graham vault, after long search, in the old Colonial burial ground, were re-interred with impressive ceremonies under the Greene monument. The ashes of his son, George Washington Greene, were likewise committed to the same receptacle. Directly over the spot
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MONUMENT TO GEN. NATHANAEL GREENE IN SAVANNAH
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which marks the last resting-place is a wreath of bronze, there placed by Savannah Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and unveiled at the time of re-interment.
Though it was designed originally that the monument to Count Pulaski should stand in Chippewa Square, the corner-stone, on Octo- ber 11, 1853, was relaid in Monterey Square; and, on January 9, 1855, the superb structure was dedicated with impressive ceremonies. It is fifty feet in height; a column of solid marble resting upon a base of granite and surmounted by a statue of the goddess of liberty, holding a wreath in her outstretched hand. On each of the four corners of the base is chiseled an inverted eannon, emblematie of loss and mourning. The coats-of-arms of both Poland and Georgia, entwined with branches of laurel, ornament the cornices, while the bird of freedom rests upon both. Pulaski, on an elegant tablet of bronze, is portrayed in the aet of falling, mortally wounded, from his horse, at the time of the famous siege; and the whole is a work of consummate art. It was executed in Italy at a cost of $18,000 and was considered at the time one of the most elegant memorials in America. The inscription on the monument reads :
"Pulaski, the Heroie Pole, who fell mortally wounded, fighting for American Liberty at the siege of Savannah, October 9, 1779."
Underneath the monument, soon after the laying of the corner-stone, were placed what at the time were supposed to be the remains of the gallant foreigner. These, having been exhumed at Greenwich, on Angus- tine Creek, the traditional place of Pulaski's burial, were placed beside the corner-stone, in a receptacle specially designed for them. The con- formity of the remains to such a man as Pulaski, aseertained upon an anatomieal examination by medieal experts, decided the commissioners to place the remains beneath the structure. [However, there are some who insist that Pulaski was buried at sea and that his real ashes are entombed between Savannah and Charleston.] To Maj. William P. Bowen belongs the chief honor of the project which culminated in the erection of the monument. Dr. Richard D. Arnold was the chairman of the commission.
Among the numerous articles deposited in the corner-stone was a piece of the oak tree from Sunbury, under which General Oglethorpe opened the first Lodge of Free Masons in Georgia, and under which also, in 1779, the charter, of the Union Society, of Savannah, was preserved and Mordecai Sheftall, then a prisoner of war, was elected president. It was the contribution of Mrs. Purla Sheftall Solomons. Col. A. R. Lawton, afterwards General, was in command of the various military organizations at the time of the relaying of the corner-stone. Robert E. Launitz, of New York, was the designer of the mounment, and Robert D. Walker, the sculptor. Richard R. Cuyler officiated in the Masonic rites.
On February 2. 1888, in Madison Square, near the handsome new DeSoto Hotel, was unveiled the superb monument to Sergeant Jasper. Vol. 1-21
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THE PULASKI MONUMENT IN SAVANNAH
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It is the work of the famous seulptor, Alexander Doyle, who at the age of thirty was the designer of more publie monuments and statues than any other man in America, and who was eredited with at least one-fifth of the memorials of this kind to be found within the Union. Surmount- ing a pedestal of granite, the figure of Sergeant Jasper, heroie in size and wrought of bronze, is portrayed in the aet of seizing the colors of his regiment. It reproduces the heroic scene of his martyrdom, on the Spring Hill redoubt, during the siege of Savannah. With the flag in one hand, he raises his gallant sword with the other, to defend the em- blem of his country's liberties. The inseription on the monument reads :
"To the memory of Sergeant William Jasper, who, though mortally wounded, reseved the colors of his regi- ment, in the assault on the British lines about the city,
THE JASPER MONUMENT, SAVANNAH
October 9, 1779. A century has not dimmed the glory of the Irish-American soldier whose last tribute to civil lib- erty was his life. 1779-1879. Ereeted by the Jasper Monument Association."
Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, enroute to Jack- sonville, Florida, honored the occasion by a drive through the city, and General John B. Gordon was also among the distinguished visitors. In the membership of the Jasper Association were many of the foremost men of Savannah, including : John Flannery, Peter W. Meldrim, John R. Dillon, John T. Ronan, J. J. MeGowan, John II. Estill, George A. Mercer, W. O. Tilton, Luke Carson, John Sereven, Jordan F. Brooks, Jeremiah Cronin and J. K. Clarke. Though not as large as either the Greene or the Pulaski monument, it is quite as impressive, and from
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the artistic standpoint is unexcelled by any memorial in the Forest City, whose monuments are world-renowned.
Near the site of the present Central Railroad depot was the famous Spring Hill redoubt where Count Pulaski and Sergeant Jasper fell mortally wounded on October 9, 1779, during the ill-fated siege of Savannah. Superb monuments to these immortal heroes have been erected on Bull Street, the city's most beautiful thoroughfare. In addition, Savannah chapter of the D. A. R. has commemorated the heroic sacrifice which they made to liberty by placing a tablet on the hill. Miss Margaret Charlton, daughter of Judge Walter G. Charlton, of Savannah, and Miss Isabelle Harrison, a descendant of Colonel Isaac Huger, who planned the assault on Spring Hill redoubt, unveiled the tablet. On account of the distinguished part taken in the siege of Savannah by Count D'Estaing, the French government deputed a spe- cial representative, Viscount Benoist d'Azy, an officer in the French navy, to attend the ceremonies. Monsieur Jusserand, the French am- bassador at Washington, and Governor Joseph M. Brown, of Georgia, made short addresses.
On the old Augusta road, two miles above Savannah, is the scene of one of the boldest captures in the history of the Revolution: Jasper Spring. Here the brave Sergeant Jasper with the help of his comrade- in-arms, Sergeant Newton, rescued six American soldiers from the Brit- ish officers who were taking them as prisoners of war from Ebenezer to Savannah. It was the work of stratagem; but there is not to be found in the annals of the war for independence a feat more courageous. The spring has ever since been called by the name of the gallant Irishman who later perished at the siege of Savannah. In 1902 Lachlin McIntosh Chapter of the D. A. R. marked the site by placing here a beautiful memorial fountain to remind the wayfarer, while quenching his thirst, of the brave exploit with which this little spring is forever associated in Georgia's historie annals.
CHAPTER VI
GEORGIA'S TERRITORIAL DOMAIN AS FIXED BY THE TREATY OF PARIS IN 1783-EXTENDS TO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER ON THE WEST AND TO THE ST. MARY'S RIVER ON THE SOUTH-AN ADDITIONAL STRIP ACQUIRED WEST OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE, BELOW THE THIRTY-THIRD PAR- ALLEL-SOUTH CAROLINA CLAIMS ALL THE TERRITORY OF GEORGIA SOUTH OF THE ALTAMAIIA RIVER AS A PART OF HIER ORIGINAL DOMAIN, NOT CEDED IN GEORGIA 'S CHARTER-THIS CLAIM ABANDONED UNDER THE TREATY OF BEAUFORT, IN 1787-IMPOVERISHED CONDITION OF THE STATE AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION-BUT THE DOMI- NANT SPIRIT OF THE ANGLO-SAXON ASSERTS ITSELF-IMMIGRATION FROM VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA INTO WILKES-GENERAL MATHEWS SETTLES A COLONY ON THE GOOSE POND TRACT-JOHN TALBOT ACQUIRES A LARGE GRANT-DR. LYMAN HALL BECOMES GOV- ERNOR-HANDSOME ESTATES GRANTED TO REVOLUTIONARY HEROES- GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE-GENERAL ANTHONY WAYNE-MAJOR JAMES JACKSON-BOTH THE CREEKS AND THE CHEROKEES, HAVING SIDED WITH THE ENGLISH, FORFEIT LARGE TRACTS OF LAND.
NOTES: GEORGIA'S FIRST NEWSPAPER-CHIEF JUSTICES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1777.
Under the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, Georgia was left in nomi- nal possession of all the territory for which her charter ealled. This embraced not only the fertile domain of country between the Altamaha and the Savannah rivers, but a wide belt of territory extending from the headwaters of these streams westward to the Mississippi River. If a straight line be drawn on our present-day map from West Point, Georgia, to a point on the Mississippi where a tributary stream, called the Yazoo River, enters the Father of Waters, this line, corresponding roughly with the thirty-third degree of north latitude, will represent the southern boundary of Georgia's western domain, as defined in the terms of her original grant from the Crown of England.
But Georgia's territorial domain embraced at this time an additional strip of very great importance, extending in width along the Atlantie eoast from Darien at the mouth of the Altamaha to St. Mary's, at a point where the Florida line touches the Atlantic Ocean. In length this strip extended to the Mississippi River. For years Spain had claimed this fertile zone to the south of the Altamaha ; but, in 1763, having eeded Florida to England, her claims were no longer a standing menace and Georgia's sonthern frontier was, therefore, extended from Darien to St. Mary's.
South Carolina regarded this extension with looks far from com-
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placent. She accordingly entered a protest, claiming that Georgia origi- nally had been earved out of South Carolina and that all lands to the south of the Altamaha, not described in Georgia's charter, belonged not to Georgia but to South Carolina, this property having never left her possession. There was some basis in fact for this contention; but South Carolina agreed to abandon her elaim at a conference between the two States, held at Beaufort, S. C., April 28, 1787 .*
But what of Georgia's territory to the west of the Chattahoochee River? When England, in 1763, acquired Florida from Spain, she divided her new provinee into two parts: East Florida, embracing a greater part of the peninsula, and West Florida, a strip extending along the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River and bounded on the north by a line drawn from the Yazoo River eastward to the Chattahoochee. The territory north of West Florida to a point corresponding with the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude was claimed by Georgia, under her royal grant. However, the Floridas did not long remain in England's possession.
Taking advantage of conditions created by the Revolution, Spain sought to regain her lost possession. This she did; but only in part. For, in the treaty of peace, under which Florida was ceded back to Spain in 1783, England fixed the northern boundary of this cession at the thirty-first parallel of north latitude, in consequence of which all the territory north of this line was ceded to the United States. But Spain became dissatisfied and refused to acknowledge the title of this country to the strip in dispute, embracing some two degrees of latitude in a strip reaching from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi. Georgia also put in a elaim to this territory, since it lay to the west of her own possessions, a elaim which accorded with the policy of all the states, in asserting jurisdiction over lands to the west of them; but the United States authorities disputed Georgia's elaim on the ground that said strip had been acquired by the nation as a whole and that it belonged therefore to the Federal Government.
Thus, for more than a deeade subsequent to the Revolution, this West Florida boundary line remained a subject of contention; but in 1795 Spain relinquished her claim to all territory north of the thirty-first parallel of north latitude, and onee more Georgia asserted her elaim to the entire region west of the Chattahoochee River. Matters were for a time quieted ; but Spain was always a most unpleasant neighbor, and not until Florida was acquired by purchase from Spain in 1819 was the southern boundary line of Georgia definitely and finally settled. But when this time eame she had already ceded her western lands to the Federal Government.
Georgia, at the elose of the Revolution, was left in a greatly impov- erished condition. All of the important towns of the state were in ruins-Savannah, Augusta, Sunbury and Ebenezer. Her population was scattered. Agriculture was languishing. There were few negroes to till the fields, some having fled to other states, while not a few were
* "Marbury and Crawford's Digest," pp. 662-667. Georgia was represented at this conference by two commissioners, John Habersham and Lachlan McIntosh; South Carolina by three commissioners, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Andrew Pickens and Pierce Butler.
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carried off by the royalists. Schools and churches were closed. There were no courts and judges. Commercial operations had been suspended. It was a time of great heaviness, and to add to the prevailing distress there was an uprising of the Creek Indians.
But the dominant spirit of the Anglo-Saxon asserted itself amid these trying conditions. The most helpless of all the eolonies, Georgia was not diseonraged, but turned her face hopefully and resolutely toward the sunrise of a new day. Nor was it long before streams of immigrants began to pour into the state from the northward, spreading out over the fertile Georgia uplands. Gen. George Mathews in 1783 settled a colony of Virginians in what was known as the Goose Pond tract on the Broad River. With him came the Gilmers, the Lumpkins, the MeGhees, the Freemans, the Meriwethers and the Barnetts. John Talbot, a Virginian, also acquired at an early date extensive grants of land. Other bands of immigrants from the same state found homes on the Little River, some few miles further to the south and west. North Carolinians also began to come in large numbers, swelling the little communities in which Tar Heel settlers had already commenced to swarm on the eve of the Revolu- tion. All of these settlements made between 1777 and 1783 were made in a region to which, under Georgia's first State Constitution, was given the name of Wilkes. From the forest stretches of this region, Colonel Elijah Clarke gathered his loyal band of partisans and marched to the overthrow of Toryism, in the famous battle of Kettle Creek. Gathering up the defenseless women and ehiklren of the Broad River distriet, Colonel Clarke had first taken these to a place of refuge beyond the mountains in Tennessee; and then returning to Georgia he had waged a relentless warfare against the enemies of Georgia, to whom all this part of Georgia was known as the "Hornet's Nest." Governor Wright had obtained these lands by cession from the Indians, in satisfaction of certain debts due to traders, the first cession having been made in 1763, the second in 1773; but as a penalty for having sided with the British, the Indians, as we shall see later, were forced to yield two large addi- tional traets to the whites.
In 1783, Dr. Lyman Hall became governor. His administration was signalized by an act of confiseation, under which Georgia took possession of all lands, tenements, ehattels, and other property interests belonging to those persons who had given help to England during the Revolution. When Georgia was in the hands of the British, in 1782, Governor Wright, aeting for the king, had confiseated the property of all who were then in resistance to the erown. Turn about, therefore, was only fair play. Governor Wright's property brought $160,000. Many who had served the state were handsomely recompensed. Gen. Nathanael Greene, for his part in redeeming Georgia from British domination, was given a magnificent estate on the Savannah River, containing some 2,100 aeres, formerly the home of Lieutenant-Governor John Graham; while a similar estate was bestowed upon Gen. Anthony Wayne, who had par- tieipated in the elosing drama of hostilities on Georgia soil. Both of these illustrious soldiers beeame citizens of Georgia. General Greene was also given a handsome estate on Cumberland Island. North Carolina and South Carolina both gave estates to General Greene, but he preferred to reside at Mulberry Grove, his Georgia estate, near Savannah. Maj.
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James Jackson, for his service to the state, was given a fine old royalist home in Savannah.
Both the Creeks and Cherokees, as above stated, sided with the British during the struggle for independence. In consequence, there was a forfeiture of land to the state at the close of hostilities .* Governor Hall was a man of vision. He realized fully the importance of an edu- cated electorate in the upbuilding of a great commonwealth and out of his recommendations to the Legislature grew not only our earliest town academies but, as we shall see later, our state university at Athens.
GEORGIA'S FIRST NEWSPAPER: THE GAZETTE .- Twelve years prior to the battle of Lexington, the earliest printing press was installed in Savannah; and on April 7, 1763, appeared the initial number of the Georgia Gazette, edited by James John- son. It was the eighth newspaper to be published in the colonies. Beyond the announcement of vital statistics, the arrival and departure of vessels in the harbor, and items relating to traffic, the little weekly sheet contained no local news. Accord- ing to one anthority, Savannah and Charleston exchanged brieflets in regard to each other: the Charlestou editor would gather information about Savannah from visitors who came to trade in Charlestou; and this he would publish in the Charleston paper. Two weeks later it would appear in the Georgia Gazette, and vice versa.
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