Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume II, Part 11

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1274

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"I am going to state something to which you need not reply, if you prefer. In your absence from the meeting of the trustees they asked how old you were. I answered that I thought you were twenty. They replied that for such an enterprise the age seemed very young."

Candidly I confessed to my patron that I was only seventeen, whereupon he replied :

"We will leave them to find it out, then, Mr. Seward."

The part of Georgia into which I had fallen was in the northeastern region and had then recently been recovered from the Indians. It was newly settled with immigrants from Virginia and from North and South Carolina. The staple was cotton, a plant which was cultivated with profit. Professional men and teachers were freely ac- cepted and welcomed there from the North. The South- ern States were just beginning to establish schools and academies for themselves. Although the planters were newcomers and generally poor, yet I think the slaves ex- ceeded the white population. No jealousy or prejudice then existed in regard to inquiries or discussions of slav- ery; but at the same time there were two kindred preju- dices highly developed. One was a suspicion, amounting to hatred, of all emancipated persons, or free negroes, as they were called; the other a strong prejudice of an abstract nature against the lower class of adventurers from the North called "Yankees." The planters enter- tained me always most cordially, as it seemed, from a re- gard to my acquirements, while the negroes improved every occasion to converse with a stranger from the Big North.

Next day I availed myself of the horse and wagon to proceed to Eatonton, where I called at the post-office, expecting there a letter from the associate whom I had left in Augusta. Besides the expected letter, I received others, which, while they gave me much pleasure, caused me much perplexity. There was a packet which had been

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transmitted to me by Richard Richardson, president of the United States Branch Bank, at Savannah. The packet contained a letter from my father, in which he stated that he had heard with paternal anguish and solicitude of my flight from college; that he had followed me from Newburgh to New York; and that, with the aid of necessary agents, he had gone in person to the wharves, resting at night from his unsuccessful search, and leaving unvisited only the schooner in which I had sailed. He implored me to return and informed me that I would be supplied with what funds I should need by Mr. Richardson. Indisposed to give up an independence which had been so dearly gained, I drew on Mr. Richardson, as he advised ine I might, for one hundred dollars. With this sum I brought my person into more presentable condition and returned to my patrons.

Replying to my father a few days later I declined his request for my return. I know not whether it was vanity or a solicitude to relieve parental anxiety that induced me to send him an Fatonton paper, which contained an advertisement carefully worded by Mr. Turner and signed by himself as secretary and by Major Alexander as pres- ident, announcing that William H. Seward, "a gentleman of talents, educated at Union College, N. Y.," had been duly appointed principal of Union Academy; that appli- cations for admission were in order; and that the school would be opened on the first of May next. The residents of the neighborhood contended with each other for the honor of entertaining me during the interval; and so I moved in a circle of hospitality around the new academy, first staying at Mr. Ward's, then at Mr. Walker's, and then at Mr. Turner's, and from these places I made ex- cursions to Milledgeville, Sparta, and other towns, always hospitably received by prominent citizens.

Hardly more than half of my vacation was passed in this pleasant way when there arose a new and startling

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difficulty. I was in my attic bedroom at Mr. Ward's, alone, revising the classics which I was soon to teach, when Major William Alexander, president of the Board of Trustees of Union Academy, ascended the crooked little stairway unattended and presented me a letter writ- ten in a hand which I quickly recognized. I read it, I doubt not, with much embarrassment.

My indignant father, in this letter, informed Major William Alexander that he had read a newspaper adver- tisement, in which the major announced the employment of one William H. Seward as principal. My father pro- ceeded to say that he lost no time in informing Major Alexander who and what kind of a person the new head of Union Academy was; that he was a much-indulged son who, without any just provocation or cause, had ab- sconded from Union College, thereby disgracing a well- acquired position and plunging his parents into profound shame and grief. In conclusion, my father warned the Major, the trustees, and all whom it might concern, that if they should continue to harbor the delinquent, he would prosecute them with the utmost vigor of the law.

"There," said the Major, in the chivalrous manner which the Southern planter had already come to assume, "I suspected as much all the while, but I do not believe that you abandoned your college and home without good cause. I shall be your friend. T will keep the affair to myself, and you may decide upon it as you think best. If you conclude to go home we shall not oppose you, al- though it will be a disappointment."

Had this been the whole of the case, it would have been easily settled. But by the same mail which brought my father's summons I received letters from my mother, showing plainly that the course which I had taken had been represented to her with aggravated additions. Her letter indicated a broken heart; and my sister, next in years to myself, assured me that my mother was on the

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verge of distraction. Alas, poor lady, my desertion was not her only sorrow. My eldest brother had two or three years earlier come into a misunderstanding with my father, no less unhappy than my own ; had left the paren- tal roof, and was seeking with uncertain success to es- tablish a fortune for himself in what was then the new State of Illinois. My next brother, perhaps more under the influence of erroneous example than from any real difficulty in his own case, had strayed away from the paternal mansion and obtained precarious employment in the city of New York; had afterwards thought to im- prove his condition by enlisting in the United States Army; and was then writing to his mother mysterious accounts of his new occupation from the barracks of Old Point Comfort.

Taking sufficient time, I carefully considered the case and then conversed with the trustees. I assured them that I would not break the engagement to the injury of the institution ; that I would call a young gentleman hither from Union College, as competent as myself, to take my place; and, furthermore, that I would remain in the per- formance of my duty until he should arrive and they should declare entire satisfaction with him. They as- sented to the arrangement, and it was carried into effect. I opened the Academy on the appointed day with sixty pupils, most of whom were well advanced in years, but quite uninstructed. Mr. Woodruff, my successor, came and was accepted, and I took leave of my generous patrons and affectionate scholars with a feeling of sad- ness, such as I have seldom experienced.

CHAPTER X

Crawford W. Long: The Discoverer of Anesthesia

O N March 30, 1842, in the town of Jefferson, Ga., Dr. Crawford W. Long, then an unknown country doctor; barely twenty-seven years of age, per- formed an operation which marked an epoch in the his- tory of medicine. At this time Dr. Long successfully employed sulphuric ether in extracting a tumor from the neck of James M. Venable. The patient, while under the influence of the anesthetic, experienced no sensation of pain whatever, and was not aware that an operation had been performed until consciousness was regained. It was the work of only a few moments ; but from this opera- tion dates the discovery of anesthesia-perhaps the greatest boon ever bestowed upon mankind. It put an end to the terrors of the knife, proclaimed the rise of modern surgery and dispelled the nightmare of centuries.

Dr. Long's discovery antedated Morton's by four years-that of Wells by two years and six months. He did not commercialize his achievement by seeking to ob- tain patent rights, nor did he make any haste to an- nounce it with a flourish of trumpets; but the whole sci- entific world has at length come to recognize the priority of the Georgian's claim .* On March 30, 1912, there was

*See New International Encyclopaedia, New York. Dodd, Mead and Co., Vol. I, p. 492, under Anesthetic; also Vol. XII. p. 433, under Long, Craw- ford W.

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unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania a handsome bronze medallion in honor of Dr. Crawford W. Long, on which occasion some of the most noted physicians of America were present. On May 21, 1910, near the scene of his great discovery. in the town of .Jefferson, a sub- stantial monument to Dr. Long was unveiled by the State Medical Association. In 1879, Mr. Henry L. Stuart, of New York, presented to the Legislature of Georgia a handsome life-size portrait of Dr. Long, which to-day hangs on the walls of the State Capitol. General John B. Gordon, in an eloquent speech, formally tendered the por- trait. On this occasion Mr. Stuart himself was present. After the ceremonies he left for Athens to visit the grave of Dr. Long, and while there was fatally stricken 'with paralysis. Being without family ties or connections at the North, he was buried in accordance with his wishes in Oconee Cemetery, at Athens, in the same lot with the great discoverer, whose services to mankind he was one of the first to recognize and honor. The Republic of France has likewise paid tribute to Dr. Long; and Geor- gia has voted to place his statue in the nation's Capitol at Washington.

When King Edward VII awakened after his operation for appendicitis, his first question was, "Who discovered anesthesia ?" to which the answer came back, "Dr. Craw- ford Long, Your Majesty." This spontaneous tribute from the king's physician may be taken as an expression of British sentiment.

The following account of the discovery of anesthesia has been condensed from a sketch written by Mr. T. W. Reed for Men of Mark in Georgia. There is doubtless no one in the State more conversant with the facts in the case than Mr. Reed, who has long been a distinguished resident of the town in which the last twenty-six years of Dr. Long's life were spent. It was the celebrated Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Cambridge, Mass., who coined the word anesthesia ; but the credit which attaches to the great discovery itself belongs to the modest Georgia

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doctor, whose mission in life was to mingle the sleeping liquid of Lethe's fabled fountain with the healing waters of Bethesda's pool.

To the discoverer of anesthesia the human race must forever stand indebted. Through the magic of this great discovery the sum of human pain has been vastly les- sened, the horrors of war have been mitigated, the ad- . vance of surgery has been made possible, the average duration of human life has been lengthened, and every department of human activity has been given additional energy, through which magnificent achievements have come to bless the world. Despite all claims to the con- trary, the honor of having made this transcendent dis- covery belongs to Crawford W. Long. ... The pass- ing years have brought forth abundant evidence on this subject; and the State of Georgia, backed by the en- dorsement of the highest authority, has set her official seal upon the achievement of her distinguished son by legislative resolution that his statue shall be placed in Statuary Hall in the nation's Capitol as one of Georgia's two greatest citizens. Nor is Georgia alone in asserting the justice of his claim, for across the seas the French have erected a statue to his memory in the capital city of that republic.

Crawford W. Long, son of James and Elizabeth Ware Long and grandson of Samuel and Ellen Williamson Long, was born in Danielsville, Ga., November 1, 1815. . . . After a few years of preparation in the local academy he entered Franklin College, now the University of Geor- gia, and received his Master of Arts degree in 1835, at the age of nineteen, ranking second in his class. During his college days he was a room-mate of Alexander H. Stephens, whose statue Georgia is to place alongside that of the discoverer of anesthesia in the Capitol at Wash- ington. . . . In 1839 he was graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. The suc-

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ceeding twelve months he spent in a hospital in New York, and on account of his success as a surgeon he was urged by his friends to apply for the position of a surgeon in the United States Navy. This was, however, contrary to the wishes of his father, and he returned to his native State, locating in Jefferson, Jackson County, Ga., in 1841. At that time Jefferson was a mere village, far removed from the large cities and the railroads.

The young country doctor quickly became a general favorite on account of his quiet, dignified bearing, his uni- form courtesy, his tender heart, and his desire at all times to be of service to his people in their hours of trouble or suffering. In those days nitrous oxide parties were, all the rage. The inhalation of this gas resulted in great ex- hilaration. Dr. Long did not boast a very extensive lab- oratory. In fact, it was practically impossible, with his meagre equipment, to prepare nitrous oxide. He, there- fore, used sulphuric ethier, and the same hilarious effect followed. Ether parties speedily became the fad among the young people of Jefferson.

During January, 1842, quite a number of ether frolics were held at Dr. Long's office, and some of the young men became thoroughly intoxicated through use of the gas. In the rough playing which followed severe bruises were received upon their bodies, but they seemed to take no notice of them. The thought dawned upon the mind of Dr. Long that ether must possess the power to deaden pain. One night, during an ether frolic, one of the young men slipped and fell, dislocating his ankle. Although the injury was quite severe, Dr. Long observed that the young man was practically unconscious of suffering. His belief in the power of ether to render one insensible to pain now deepened into a settled conviction, and he re- solved to prove his discovery by using ether in the first surgical case he might chance to get.

Two miles from Jefferson lived James M. Venable, a young man who had frequently been in Dr. Long's

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office and who had several times spoken to the physician about cutting two tumors from the back of his neck. Convinced of the anesthetic powers of sulphuric ether, Dr. Long disclosed to Venable his plans for the operation. On March 30, 1842, sulphuric ether was administered to Venable until he became completely anesthetized. The small cystic tumor was then excised from the back of his neck and the patient was amazed when he regained consciousness to find that the operation was over and the tumor removed, without causing him the slightest pain. In fact, he had not even known that the operation was being performed. It is beyond question that this date marks the discovery of anesthesia.

Dr. Horace Wells, ignorant of Dr. Long's discovery, tried laughing gas on himself in 1844. Dr. William T. G. Morton announced his discovery in 1846 .* Dr. Charles T. Jackson accidentally inhaled chlorine gas in 1842 and used ether as an antidote, thus producing partial anes- thetization, but he did not pursue the subject further at that time. Although Jefferson was a small village and Dr. Long a young physician, he operated on at least eight cases, each being thoroughly successful, before Morton claimed to have discovered anesthesia. It is claimed that Dr. Long kept his discovery secret, and therefore de- served no credit for it. The affidavits of Dr. Ange De- Laperriere and Dr. Joseph B. Carlton show that Dr. Long informed them and other physicians, and that they used ether successfully in their surgical practice before the date of Dr. Morton's announcement.

*Morton called the anesthetic which he patented "Letheon." It is today known as ether. Wells committed suicide in the city of New York, where he became mentally unbalanced after fruitless efforts to establish his claim. Morton communicated his idea to Dr. J. C. Warren, of Boston, who is alleged to have performed the first public operation on a person anesthetized with ether, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, October 16, 1846. Jackson perfected a process of etherization for which the French Academy offered him a prize of 2,000 francs. Dr. James Y. Simpson, a Scotch physician of Edinburgh, who discovered chloroform anesthesia, in 1856, was created a baronet.

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In 1849 Morton asked Congress to reward him for his discovery. Jackson at once opposed him. The friends of Wells, who was then dead, also protested against his claim. Long refused to enter this contest until 1854, at which time he was urged by his friends to assert vigor- ously his claim to the honor. He thereupon communi- cated the facts in the case to United States Senator Will- iam C. Dawson, who brought Dr. Long's claim to the at- tention of Congress, creating consternation among the rival claimants. Much wrangling followed, and the merits of the issue were never determined. The date of Jack- son's claim more nearly approaches that of Long's claim than does that of either of the others, but Jackson before his death wrote to Senator Dawson, acknowledging the justice of Long's claim.

Congress having failed to settle the disputed ques- tion of priority in the discovery of anesthesia, Dr. Long failed to receive the credit due him until May, 1877, when Dr. J. Marion Sims, of New York, investigated his claims fully and presented them in an able paper published in the Virginia Medical Monthly. To the demand for recog- nition made by Dr. Sims there was a general response, which brought much cheer to the heart of the distin- guished discoverer. Eminent physicians the world over hastened to give him full credit for the great boon con- ferred upon humanity, and since then his claims to dis- tinction as the discoverer of anesthesia have not seriously been questioned.

For ten years after his discovery of the anesthetic powers of sulphuric ether, Dr. Long continued the prac- tice of his profession in Jefferson. He then removed to Athens, in which city he became a most distinguished phy- sician, and where he lived until his death, twenty-six years later. . . . He was a splendid type of the Southern gentleman of ante-bellum days. At the bedside of the rich and the poor his ministrations soothed and com-

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forted; through the blinding storm, often in the dead of night, he went without complaining to those who needed him; and to the last moment of his stay on earth his life was typical of the discovery with which his name will be forever associated, a life of blessing to those with whom he came in contact. He often remarked that his one great wish was to die in harness. On June 16, 1878, he was called to the bedside of a patient in whose case he was deeply interested. While performing the duties in- cident to the case, he suffered a stroke of apoplexy, from which death came in a few hours. The brain which had given to the world the blessings of anesthesia was at rest, but it left behind a gift to humanity the import- ance of which can never be estimated.

CHAPTER XI

John Clark : His Grave Overlooking St. Andrew's Bay on the Gulf of Mexico

U NDERNEATH a plain white obelisk of marble, overlooking the waters of St. Andrew's Bay, on the west coast of Florida, rest the mortal ashes of a most distinguished Georgian : Governor John Clark. An exile in death from the great State whose highest civic office he once held, this illustrious soldier and statesman is the only one of Georgia's chief magistrates-unless ex- ception be made of Governor Treutlen-who sleeps be- yond her borders. The latter is supposed to have been buried in South Carolina, where he was quartered by the Indians and Tories. His last resting-place is un- known. But not so with Governor Clark. The grove of ancient live oaks in which he lies, though removed somewhat from the beaten highways of travel, can be reached by an hour's ride from Pensacola; and Georgia owes it to her own historic past to bring the ashes of Governor Clark back home, so that when his long sleep of death is over he can wake once more on his native hills.

The Daughters of the American Revolution, through the initiative of Mrs. Joseph S. Harrison, of Columbus, Ga., have already taken the matter in hand, and there is a likelihood that the old hero will soon repose with the nation's dead, at Marietta.

It was around the dramatic figure of John Clark that the fiercest fires of partisan politics known to the annals

*Gov. John Clark usually spelled his name without the final "e." But his father, Gen. Elijah Clarke, preferred the longer form.

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of this State raged for more than twenty heated years. The earliest division of Georgia into factional camps grew out of a quarrel between John Clark and William H. Crawford, which finally led to a duel, in which the latter was wounded. On the departure of Crawford for the forum of national affairs, he was succeeded on the battleground of State. politics by George M. Troup, who, under a fresh banner, renewed the old fight; but twice when the Governor's office was the prize for which these doughty champions contended in the lists, Troup was unhorsed by John Clark, who bore off the laurels of combat.

Governor Clark was a man of limited learning, but he possessed an intellect of strong native powers and an iron strength of will. As a fighter he scarcely knew what the word "surrender" meant. This trait of his character was a martial inheritance from his distinguished father, by whose side, at the battle of Kettle Creek, when a lad of thirteen, the younger Clark fought like an infant lion. At the age of sixteen he held a captain's commission. Subsequent to the Revolution, in a campaign against the Indians, in 1787, when still barely twenty-one, he distin- guished himself at the battle of Jack's Creek, an engage- ment which, according to some authorities, was named in his honor. Eventually the Legislature of Georgia gave him the rank of Major-General in the State militia; but he was greatly incensed in 1812 when Governor Mitchell ignored him by putting General Floyd in command of the State troops.

His irate temper often overmastered him. On one occasion he assaulted Judge Tait on the streets of Mil- ledgeville. The latter afterwards married Mrs. Clark's sister. On another occasion, when somewhat bibulous, he mutilated a picture of George Washington in front of Micajah Williamson's tavern, for which, however, "he paid like a gentleman."

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Governor Clark was a native of North Carolina, in which State he was born in 1766. . He accompanied his father, on the eve of the Revolution to Wilkes County, where the greater part of his life was spent. If he was a man of strong passions, bitter in his enmities, relentless in his tactics, somewhat intemperate in his habits, he was also a man who never sacrified a friend, who never betrayed a trust, and whose devotion to Georgia was never successfully impeached by his foes. Governor Clark was a man of the people. The aristocratic planters, as a rule, supported Crawford and Troup. On relinquish- ing the office of Governor, he espoused the cause of Mat- thew Talbot, a candidate who met defeat at the hands of Governor Troup. Later Clark himself became once more a candidate in the first popular election for Governor ever held in Georgia, but encountering defeat, he withdrew from State politics forever; and-to quote Dr. George G. Smith-there came to an end "the longest continued personal contest ever known in Georgia or perhaps else- where in the United States."

Embittered over the result, Governor Clark accepted from President Jackson the post of Indian Agent, which made him virtually the custodian of the public lands of Florida. It was not an office to which any high honor attached, but the salary enabled him to live in comfort and to extend hospitality to the friends who came to so- journ under his roof. Governor Clark owned large tracts of land in Wilkes. Miss Lane informs us that in 1806 he made a deed to Wylie Pope, in which he reserved an area of ground twenty feet square, whereon his children, Elijah Clark and George Walton Clark, were buried .* The statement is made on the authority of Governor Gil- mer that he eventually forgave his enemies, with the single exception of William H. Crawford, against whom his old feeling of animosity continued until the last hour.

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Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume II, Part 11

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933 Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co. Number of Pages: 1274

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1274