USA > Georgia > Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume I > Part 15
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"Happily Sequoya knew nothing of ancient phonetics ; he undertook to deal with sounds not with ideas. Had he undertaken, like the ancients, to represent ideas by symbols, it is very certain that he could never have reached his proposed end; could never have developed his idea; could never have found a workable system of character representation. Turning into the field of real phonetics, or abstract sounds divested of all connection with ideas or word-representatives-this wonderful child of the forest set himself to the task of counting up and calendarizing-pardon the word-the separate sounds found in the Cherokee language.
"These he reckoned at eighty-five in number. Arrived at this point his work was already, for the most part, accomplished. The inventing of eighty-five character- representatives for these eighty-five distinct sounds, was a much lighter task. But what infinite toil and research to examine all the words of his language with their con- stituent sounds or syllables, resolve them and find a key for representing them. Cadmus, nor any Phoenician, Egyptian, Chinaman, nor other ancient nor modern had ever reached any such solution to the literary problem.
"For about twelve years he labored at his strange task, and, as usual with men of real genius, was ridiculed by his people, who could not grasp the meaning of his bizarre life and studies. He is usually pictured with a pipe in his mouth, bending over his work; though we can give no credit to the nicotine for any part of his inven- tion. For untold centuries the Indians had used their tobacco for offerings, for the curing of diseases, for seal- ing treaties, and for nerve-soothing around their camp-
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fires. But we have never read of anything of intellectual, moral, or physical worth as a probable result of this devotion to their native weed, the chief of narcotics.
"But Sequoya won at last. In 1821 the Cherokee council adopted the new syllabary, and the nation, with great enthusiasm, set about to learn it. In a few months thousands of them could read and write Sequoyan with facility. The Cherokee boy made no mistakes in his spelling. His written language had no silent letters, no ambiguous sounds, to deal with. Sequoya was now in high feather among the people who had once derided him.
"In 1822 he went to those Cherokees who had already settled beyond the Mississippi to teach these also the new system, and the next year he established his permanent home with these western tribesmen. The practicability of the new system was soon put to the proof, for in 1824 parts of the Bible were published in Sequoyan Cherokee, and in 1828 the first North American Indian periodical- the Cherokee Phoenix-began to be published at New Echota, the Cherokee capital, near the present Rome in North Georgia.
"The Phoenix-published partly in English and partly in Sequoyan-ran until October, 1835, when the general forced migration of the tribe to the trans- Mississippi brought about its suspension. Elias Boudi- not was its editor.
"Several other periodicals at irregular intervals. The Cherokee Messenger, in 1844, published at the Bap- tist mission, Park Hill, I. T., and entirely in Cherokee; The Cherokee Advocate, in 1844, a weekly, partly in English and partly in Cherokee; The Cherokee Almanac, an annual now of many years' standing, and various other current, or permanent publications have since appeared.
"Sequoya's worth was now appreciated by his peo- ple. In 1828 the western Cherokees sent him to Washing-
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ton to negotiate in their behalf with the government, and when the eastern and western Cherokees were united in their new home, he became a powerful factor in the organ- izing of the tribal government.
"But he was still a dreamer and an idealist. The con- ception of a common Indian language with a common grammar and a common syllabary, took possession of his mind, and he visited many tribes searching for these com- mon linguistic elements for aboriginal uniformity.
"He probably never realized the need, as preliminary to his generalization, for individual and native investiga- tors to do for their respective tongues what he himself had done for Cherokee, viz .: to first reduce these dialects to syllabaries with character representatives, out of which a large system of common phonetics might be pro- duced, though we fail to see how a common written lan- guage could have been the outcome.
"In China twenty totally different vernaculars have a common literary language ; but this is due to a common system of word, or idea, representation, e. g., the ideo- graphs for horse, cow, dog, etc., may be universally recog- nized while the words severally expressing these ideas in the various dialects may be widely different and mutually unintelligible.
"But in a system of sound characters the ideas are wholly wanting, and unrelated to the sounds. Sequoya went in his old age in quest of a lost Cherokee tribe which, according to tradition, had settled somewhere in the west. In August 1843, he died, near San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, the most extraordinary literary genius of perhaps all the ages.
"It is curious to speculate upon the possible and the probable outcome of Sequoya's remarkable invention, could it have had fair play for two or three centuries
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among the Cherokees. What could it have accomplished alone and unhampered among these tribesmen ? To what degree of civilization might they have attained with their syllabary alone to help them in science and arts? Of course we must allow as preliminary its author's first acquaintance with the whites and the suggestion and the spur thus afforded to him, without which he would never have undertaken the creation of a literary system. But this much given, and then the permanent segregation of the Cherokees from the whites,-what of the result?
"Is it too much to suppose that the Cherokees would by themselves have reached a high stage of civilization? What has been the effect of a general knowledge of letters among the nations of the earth? Such peoples have uni- formly attained to a high stage of advancement on every, line. Nor need we suppose that the Cherokees would have furnished an exception to this universal ethnic rule. But Sequoya's system never had opporunity for full de- velopment. The English language, the English school, the English book and periodical,-held the Cherokee in their clasp. The pressure was too powerful to be resisted. But suppose the Cherokees with their syllabary left alone with the other tribes of the forest,-they would un- doubtedly have become the Athenians of this Western world, while the other red men would have been the 'Barbarians' despised by these American Hellenes."*
*The Library of Southern Literature, Vol. XVI, Atlanta, 1913.
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CHAPTER XLI
Woodlawn: The Home of William H. Crawford
T HREE miles from the town of Lexington, on the outskirts of the village which bears his name and reached by a branch line of the Georgia Railroad between Union Point and Athens, is the old home of William H. Crawford: Woodlawn. It is one of the sacred places of the commonwealth, for the man who here spent his last days was one of the greatest intellects and one of the most titanic figures of his time in Georgia. From the pen of an intimate acquaintance of Mr. Craw- ford has come a picture of the beautiful domestic life of the illustrious statesman and incidentally it portrays the old home in which the happiest hours of his eventful career were spent. The author of the sketch was Joseph Beckham Cobb, a son of the distinguished statesman, Thomas Willis Cobb, for whom Cobb County was named. The latter was Mr. Crawford's most intimate friend; and the former, when a boy, often visited the Crawford home near Lexington. With sympathetic touch he de- scribes the return of the wan and emaciated statesman to Georgia, at the close of the long and bitter struggle for the Presidency, his pallid face, his bent figure, all in painful and tragic contrast with the William H. Craw- ford, who, in 1813, an Apollo of physical beauty, had charmed and delighted the Court of Napoleon. Says Mr. Cobb :* Disease had robbed him of the fine appear- ance and majectic carriage which had so impressed every one who knew him in the zenith of his career. The com-
*"Leisure Hours," by Joseph Beckham Cobb.
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manding intelleet which had won the reverence of a nation no longer shone with original splendor. He was in fact the mere shadow or wreck of what he had been. Some who hastened to see him with eager eyes came away saddened and down cast, when they called to mind the vast difference between the Crawford of 1813 and the Crawford of 1825. All had heard of his illness, but no one was prepared to witness such a change: he could scarcely see, he spoke with great difficulty, and even with apparent pain; his walk was almost a hobble and his whole frame evidenced, on the least motion, that its power and vigor had been seriously assaulted."
Mr. Cobb continues: "Woodlawn was his next and last stage; and the family entered its grounds with feel- ings akin to those of exiles returning from a painful banishment. It was a retired, peculiarly rural spot, un- adorned with costly or imposing structures, and boasted of no artificial embellishments of taste; everything around partook of the simple habits of the illustrious owner. It was fronted with a magnificent forest of oaks, through which the mansion was approached from the main road, along a romantie and winding avenue, just wide enough for vehicles to pass with convenience. In the rear opened an extensive clearing which formed the plantation, dot- ted here and there with peach and apple orchards, and afforded an excellent prospect of hill and meadow : around and through these meandered a clear little brook, which found its source in a delightful spring only a few yards distant from the mansion, and which lent a charming appearance to the whole scene. The garden bloomed with an abundance of shrubbery and of choice and tender fruit trees, which were planted and tended by Crawford, with the help of the elder children alone, and smiled in the luxuriance and gaiety of its numerous flower beds. A rich carpet of blue grass covered the lawn in front ; and here, of a calm evening, beneath the shade of an
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ancient oak, might be seen frequently gathered the entire family, the retired statesman himself always in the midst and ever the liveliest and happiest of the group. The memories of the past, laden alike with greatness and with gloom, seem now to have faded to mere secondary and subordinate importance. The quiet joys of domestic life, unmixed with aught which could mar the loveliness of home, spread content throughout the family circle, and enlivened the secluded homestead with a warmth of affection and harmony too pure and too substantial to be compared with the fleeting pleasures and with the ephemeral honors of politics."
The last resting-place of the great Georgian who nar- rowly missed the highest office in the gift of the American people, who served in the Senate and in the Cabinet, and who challenged the admiration of the great Napoleon, sleeps in the family burial-ground adjacent to the man- sion. The grave is marked by no impressive memorial, but over it is a horizontal slab of marble, raised perhaps two feet from the ground; and on the smooth surface of the stone is chiseled the following epitaph :
"Sacred to the memory of William H. Crawford; born the 24th day of February, 1772, in Nelson County, Virginia; died the 15th day of September, 1834, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. In the Legislature of Georgia, in the Senate of the United States, as Minister to the Court of France, in the Cabinet and on the Bench, he was alike independent, energetic, fearless, and able. He died as he had lived-in the service of his country- and left behind him the unimpeachable fame of an honest man. ''
CHAPTER XLII
Historic Old Wesleyan: The First Female College to Confer Diplomas
T O the city of Macon, Georgia, belongs the unique distinction of possessing the mother-school for the higher education of women. Perhaps there are institutions whose pioneer work for the intellectual emancipation of the sex date further back, but an investi- gation will show that they possessed no authority to confer degrees. The first college in the world chartered for the express purpose of awarding diplomas to women was undoubtedly historic old Wesleyan Female College, at Macon. It was only to a limited extent that public attention, during the early part of the last century, was directed to the educational needs of the fair sex. At first the various Legislatures of the country were averse to chartering even academies which were designed exclu- sively for women and Georgia was one of the very first States to abandon this policy of discrimination. In 1827, the Legislature chartered the first female academy under State patronage at Harmony Grove, now Commerce, Ga., in Jackson County, but it soon ceased to exist. The time was not ripe for such an innovation. Colonel Dun- can G. Campbell, of Wilkes, was the pioneer champion in Georgia of the new crusade. When a young man he taught a select school for girls in the town of Washing- ton, and as early as 1825 le advocated in the State Leg- islature the wisdom of chartering a college, but he failed of success. In 1835, his son-in-law, Daniel Chandler,
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made an address at the University of Georgia, in which he made an eloquent plea for the admission of the fair sex to the same educational rights and privileges ac- corded to men and he called attention to the fact that at this time there was not a college in the world which con- ferred degrees upon women. The speech of Mr. Chandler created a deep impression.
It also brought results. His views were heartily en- dorsed in Macon, and when a movement was launched to establish a female academy in the young town, Rev. Elijah Sinclair suggested that the wide-awake people of Macon build a female college instead. There came an immediate response to this proposal. The Ocmulgee Bank agreed to subscribe $25,000 to the fund, in the event the Legislature granted the charter, and other pledges of support were offered. The outcome was that a charter was finally granted by the Legislature, on December 10, 1836, giving legal existence to the Georgia Female College, the name by which the pioneer school was first known. In due time, the buildings were com- pleted, on a scale somewhat extensive. There followed a rush of patronage, but the great financial panic of 1837 involved some of the largest subscribers. The builder closed his lien. The college was put upon the market. At this stage of the proceedings, Dr. George F. Pierce, afterwards Bishop, stepped unon the scene, bought the college for Georgia Methodists, and, under the banner of the church, reorganized it as the Wesleyan Female Col- lege. Without an endowment, it was not an easy matter to keep the institution afloat. But friends arose, and fortune smiled.
The first graduation exercises were held in 1840 and the first diploma was awarded to a member of the class who afterwards became Mrs. Katherine E. Benson. She was the first woman in the world to receive a college degree. Bishop Pierce resigned in 1841. But he con-
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tinued to work for the college in the field. Dr. W. H. Ellison succeeded him. Then came Dr. Edward H. Myers. Two other presidents next took charge in suc- cession, Dr. O. L. Smith and Dr. J. M. Bonnell. Finally the noted Dr. W. C. Bass was called to the helm, and for twenty-five years shaped the destinies of Wesleyan. It was during his administration that Mr. George I. Seney, the noted philanthropist of New York, befriended the institution. He first gave it $50,000, then he after- wards increased this amount to $125,000. It may be stated in this connection that one of the earliest bene- factors of the college was a wealthy planter of Houston County, Mr. James A. Everett. He first bought a number of scholarships conditioned upon the adoption of the col- lege by Georgia Methodists, and then, in 1845, he lifted a mortgage upon the institution of $10,000. These bene- factions, having been rendered at the start, though small in amounts, were far-reaching in ultimate results. The Seney gift was bestowed largely through the influence of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, then president of Emory College at Oxford. In 1894 a well equipped chemical laboratory was installed, chiefly through the efforts of two members of the faculty, Prof. Charles O. Townsend and Prof. Joseph T. Derry. The present handsome four- story brick building was completed in 1900, and, in honor of Dr. J. W. Roberts, then president of Wesleyan, was christened Roberts Hall. Hon. Dupont Guerry, a dis- tinguished lawyer of Macon, was next called to the helm. He was the first layman to be vested with the duties of this high office, and, though the institution prospered under Mr. Guerry, he returned after a few years to the practice of his profession. Dr. W. N. Ainsworth suc- ceeded him; but resumed the pastorate in 1912. Dr. C. R. Jenkins is the present executive head; and, under him, old Wesleyan Female College is enjoying a degree of prosperity hitherto unknown.
CHAPTER XLIII
Chickamauga: One of the Bloodiest Battle-Fields of Modern Times Becomes a National Park
O CCUPYING an area somewhat larger than the Dis- trict of Columbia, the once sanguinary battle- field of Chickamauga has been converted into one of the most beautiful parks to be found anywhere on the continent. The tract of land embraces over 7,000 luxuriantly wooded acres, the jurisdictional rights to which have been ceded by the State of Georgia to. the Federal government; and the extensive grounds have since been threaded by magnificent drive-ways and adorned by many exquisite memorials to the heroic dead of both armies. It was Gen. Henry V. Boynton, of Ohio, who, in a letter, dated August 17, 1888, first suggested the idea of converting this historic battle-ground into a park similar to the one at Gettysburg1. The proposition everywhere met with the heartiest endorsement from the old soldiers; and in due time there was a joint meeting between the Blue and the Gray which resulted in the Chickamauga Memorial Association, to take the matter in hand. The bill to create the park was introduced in 1890 by Gen. Charles H. Grosvenor, of Ohio, then a rep- resentative in Congress2. It was duly enacted into law ;
1Dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park, Sept. 18-20, 1895. Report of the Joint Committee of Congress, compiled by H. V. Boynton, p. 317, address of Gen. Chas. H. Grosvenor, Washington, D. C., 1896. 2Ibid, p. 324.
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but, in addition to the Chickamauga battle-ground, it provided for the acquisition of the historic fields around Chattanooga, the whole to form a system connected by splendid roads and to be known as the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Military Park. Such was the pressure of patriotic sentiment brought to bear upon the national law-makers that little opposition was encountered in either House. Though embraced in one system there are today virtually two parks-one for Georgia and one for Tennessee.
With the most impressive ceremonies of dedication, in which some of the leading public men of the nation took part, Chickamauga Park was formally opened, on September 19, 1895. Gen. John M. Palmer, of Illinois, and Gen. John B. Gordon, of Georgia, were the principal speakers. On the following day occurred the exercises of dedication at Chattanooga. Besides the central pro- grams around which the chief interest revolved, there were meetings held by numerous military commands and ceremonies connected with the dedication of State monu- ments. When the park was opened, there were only eight States whose memorial tributes were ready for dedica- tion; but the number since then has been more than treb- led. In addition, the positions of the various commands have been indicated by handsome markers. The Georgia State monument, unveiled on May 4, 1899, with an elo- quent oration by one of Georgia's most distinguished sons, Hon. J. C. C. Black, of Augusta, stands in the southwest part of the field, near the historic Lafayette road. It is one of the most superb memorials on the entire field of battle, surpassing even the colossal shafts erected by New York and Ohio. The massive column of granite, rising to a lofty height, is surmounted by the bronze figure of a private soldier. He stands on a flowered capital and holds in his hand a Confederate flag. There are three figures in bronze, at the base of the column, on the mas- sive granite pedestal. These represent the three branches of the service engaged in the action and guard the three
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faces of the monument. In the center of the group stands an infantryman; on his left a cannoneer, and on his right a trooper. Just back of the infantryman, embedded in the shaft is a metal plate, representing the seal of the State of Georgia. The monument is a consummate mas- terpiece of art, the admiration of every one who visits the park; but the inscription-supposed to have been written by Major Joseph B. Cumming, of Augusta-is not less exquisite than the monument on which it shines like a diamond of the purest water. On a metal plate, beneath the figure of the infantryman, these words are inscribed :
"To the lasting memory of all her sons who fought on this field-those who fought and lived and those who fought and died, those who gave much and those who gave all-Georgia erects this monument.
General John B. Gordon, the "Chevalier Bayard of the Confederacy," afterwards United States Senator from Georgia and Governor of the State, commanded a brigade at Chickamauga. He was familiar from earliest boyhood with the site of the future battle-ground. For, not long after the removal of the Cherokee Indians to the West his father settled in this part of the State, where might still be seen the footprints of the red-skin warriors who had fished in the bright waters of the little mountain stream. Says General Gordon1 : "Every local- ity now made famous by the stupendous struggle between the Confederate and Union armies was impressed upon my boyish memory by the legends which associated them with deeds of Indian braves. One of the most prominent features of the field was the old Ross House, built of hewn logs, and formerly the home of John Ross, a noted
1Reminiscences of the Civil War, by Gen. John B. Gordon, pp. 198-199, New York, 1905.
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Cherokee chief. In this old building I had often slept at night on my youthful journeyings with my father through the sparsely settled region. Snodgrass Hill, the Gordon and Lee Mills, around which the battle raged, the Lafayette road, across which the contending lines so often swayed, causing it to be called the "bloody lane," the crystal Crawfish Spring, at which were gathered thousands of the wounded-these had all been perfectly familiar to me for years."
Continuing he observes :* "An American battle which surpassed in its ratio of carnage the bloodiest conflicts in history outside of this country ought to be better un- derstood by the American people. Sharpsburg or Anti- etam had, I believe, a larger proportion of killed and wounded than any other single day's battle of our war: which is equivalent to saying that it was larger than any in the world's wars. Chickamauga, however, in its two days of heavy fighting, brought the ratio of losses to the high-water mark. Judged by percentage in killed and wounded, Chickamauga nearly doubled the sanguinary records of Marengo and Austerlitz; was two and a half times heavier than that sustained by the Duke of Marl- borough at Malplaquet; more than double that suffered by the army under Henry of Navarre in the terriffic slaughter at Coutras ; nearly three times as heavy as the percentage of loss at Solferino and Magenta; five times greater than that of Napoleon at Wagram and about ten times as heavy as that of Marshal Saxe at Bloody Ran- coux. Or, if we take the average percentage of loss in a number of the world's great battles-Waterloo, Wag- ram, Valmy, Magenta, Solferino, Zurich, Lodi-we shall find by comparison that Chickamauga's record of blood surpassed them nearly three to one. It will not do to say that it was due to the longer range of our rifles nor to the more destructive character of our implements of warfare; for at Chickamauga as well as in the Wilder- ness and at Shiloh, the woodlands prevented the hostile
*Ibid, 199-200.
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lines from seeing each other at great distances and ren- dered the improved arms no more effective than would have been rifles of short range. There is but one possible explanation : the personal character and the consecrated courage of American soldiers."
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