USA > Georgia > Jefferson County > History of Jefferson county > Part 6
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What Georgian isn't interested in Louisville where the real beginnings of our statehood were had?
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This tablet will not only remind those who come after us that here stood Georgia's first permanent capital, but it specially commemorates a certain act that took place on this spot.
By an Act approved January 26, 1786, Nathan Brownson, William Few, and Hugh Lawson, Es- quires, were appointed Commissioners with the power to proceed to fix a place for the seat of the public buildings, provided the same be within twenty miles of Galphin's old town; and to purchase a tract of land for that purpose, and to lay out a part there- of into lots, streets, and alleys, the town to be known by the name of Louisville.
These Commissioners proceeded with their duties. There were delays due to lack of funds and the death of the contractor, so that the public buildings were not finally completed until March, 1786, (Knight), but by the Constitution of 1795 the new town was designated as the permanent capital.
The three men who "laid out" the town of Louis- ville and who were charged with the duty of seeing that the necessary public buildings were erected, and who therefore became in a sense the founders of Louisville were themselves a distinguished trio. Hugh Lawson was the son of a North Carolinian who before the Revolution settled in what is now Jefferson county. The son was a captain in the War
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of Independence, was frequently a member of the General Assembly from this County, a leader in the politics of the State and progenitor of many dis- tinguished Georgians who have served her well from that day to this. Nathan Brownson was a resident of Liberty County. He was a physician, a graduate of Yale, a member of the Provincial Congress of Geor- gia, twice a member of the Continental Congress, and Governor of Georgia, besides filling with credit a number of other important offices. William Few was a partisan officer of Georgia troops during the Revolution, a member of the Executive Council, a delegate to the Continental Congress, Judge of the Superior Court in the early days, and a United States Senator from Georgia in the first Congress.
When Louisville was made the capital, it stood near the eastern boundary of the red men's hunting grounds. The white settlements at that time were only the coast counties and a narrow strip west of the Savannah river. Louisville was really almost a frontier settlement. Practically speaking, all west of here, all the mountainous part of the state, most of the wiregrass section, all of southwest Georgia, was a primeval forest. Nominally, the treaty of Paris in 1783 left Georgia in possession of a great expanse of territory stretching from the Savannah to the Mississippi. But of this region only a small por-
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tion was actually settled and possessed by the citi- zens. Our lands beyond the Chattahoochee were known as our western lands, or Georgia's western territory.
It was a day of large land speculations. Robert Morris, known to us as the financier of the Revolu- tion, invested his whole fortune in wild lands, own- ing at one time in western New York more acres than there are today in the whole state of Connecti- cut. James Wilson, another signer of the Declara- tion, and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was another large land speculator. John Marshall, the eminent Chief Justice, and his brother had bought up the Lord Fairfax lands in western Virginia-a tract large enough for a king- dom. Many others had gone wild on the subject of buying up large bodies of lands and speculating upon them. It seemed to be the favorite way in which to invest fortunes. It amounted almost to a craze.
There were three different Acts passed by the Georgia legislature purporting to sell those lands. The first was in 1789, the sale being to foreign land companies, instead of to a company of Georgians, whose bid was rejected, although they offered a larger price. The Act required payment to be made in specie by a time, and the purchasers having failed to fully comply with their bid, the sale was not com- pleted.
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At the session of the legislature in November, 1794, held at Augusta, proposals were again made by several parties for the purchase of the western territory of Georgia. In narrating the passage of the bill through the legislature, and its final approval by the governor; the feeling it aroused over the state, and the passage by the subsequent legislatures of the Rescinding Act; and the dramatic spectacle of the burning of the records, I am using the account found in Bishop Stevens' History of Georgia.
The matter was referred to a joint committee of both houses. The majority reported in favor of a sale-and a bill was introduced to sell the lands to "The Georgia company," "The Georgia-Mississippi Company," "The Tennessee Company," and "The Virginia Yazoo company."
An amendment was proposed, adding to these "The Georgia Union Company" composed of Gen- eral Twiggs, William Few, John Weareat, William Gibbons, Jr., et al., who made certain proposals to the committee for a tract of land supposed to con- tain at least twenty-three million acres and for which they offered the sum of $500,000.00.
The committee to whom was referred this last proposal reported "That an examination of the boundaries of the district proposed to be purchased by the above named gentlemen and their associates,
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it appears to be composed of the two districts pro- posed to be purchased by the 'Georgia,' and the 'Georgia-Mississippi companies,' and no more ! that the sum offered is $90,000.00 greater than that offered by both the other companies; and that the new company proposes to reserve for the citizens double the amount indicated by the other companies ; and they submit the advantages and disadvantages of each to the decision of the House."
The application of the Georgia Union Company, notwithstanding their larger offers and more liberal reserves, was however rejected.
Various amendments were offered to this bill by those opposed to this measure, but they were sever- ally voted down by a steady and determined majority and the bill was passed and sent to the governor for his signature.
The governor vetoed it (the first time a Governor of Georgia had ever vetoed a bill), his objections being seven in number :
Ist. The time had not arrived for disposing of the territory;
2nd : The sum offered is inadequate ;
3rd : The quantity reserved for the citizens is too small;
4th : Greater advantages are secured to the pur- chasers than to the citizens ;
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5 th : So large an extent of territory disposed of to individuals will create a monopoly and will retard settlement of the lands ;
6th : One-fourth at least of the lands should be reserved for future disposal by the state;
7th: That if public notice were given that the lands were for sale, probably more would have been offered therefor.
Upon reading the Governor's veto message a Committee was appointed to confer with His Ex- cellency. A conference was had, and without meet- ing by any means the more potent objection con- tained in his dissent, another bill was brought in with slight modifications. While the new bill was pend- ing "The Georgia Union Company" again addressed a letter to each branch of the Legislature, enclosing proposals for purchasing the whole of the territory specified in the vetoed bill, and offering as consid- erations for the same "a deposit (by way of for- feiture) of $40,000.00 in bills of exchange on Phila- delphia, at double usance, with indisputable en- dorsers; to pay to the State the residue of the pur- chase money, amounting, in the whole, to $800,000.00 on or before December 1, next; prom- ising to reserve 4,000,000 acres to the State to be disposed of as this or a future Legislature shall direct, and also to reserve 4,000,000 for the citizens themselves.
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Through the influence of the agent of the other companies, this proposition by which so many and greater advantages would come to the State, met with as little favor as their former petition. The Legislature goaded on by an outside pressure not easily withstood within three days after bringing in the old bill slightly modified, passed the same; the scruples of the too pliant Governor were over- come, and on the 7th of December the bill received his signature, and became the law of the land. And 35,000,000 acres were granted for $500,000.00 or less than two cents per acre. The greatest real estate transaction in history.
It may well be supposed that such an act could not pass without calling out earnest remonstrance and decided opposition. Among the earliest remon- strants were Wm. H. Crawford and other citizens of Columbia county, who even before the bill was signed by the Governor, prayed that he would "neg- ative the said bill in due form inasmuch as we do conceive it to be bad policy to give a grant to the company purchasing before the full amount of pur- chase money is paid; that if a grant should be given, the grantees may refuse to give a mortgage; and even if they should, it can only be foreclosed in that part of the State where the territory in question doth lie; and lastly, whenever the territory is sold,
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the price would be greatly enhanced by giving notice to all the citizens."
This petition expressed the views of many citi- zens. Others objected to the bill because they were thereby to a great extent debarred from participat- ing in the grand speculation of the several com- panies. Others, because they held that there was no necessity so urgent as to require this enormous sacrifice of territory; and others still because they saw in the bill only the legalizing of an immoral swindling scheme to rob the State of her invaluable lands for the benefit not of her citizens in general, but of a few bold and unscrupulous speculators who were willing to advance their own fortunes upon the ruin and dishonor of the State.
The people as soon as they heard of the passage of this bill and began to discuss its merits and under- stand its provisions, were aroused to a sense of the great injury which had been done to their own inter- ests; and as there was developed to them, step by step, the various means and bribes and machinations which were set to work to bring over or buy over the several members of the legislature to vote for these measures, their indignation rose higher and higher, and vented itself in presentments of grand juries, in violent newspaper warfare, in stinging per- sonal invective and insult, in threats of corporal vio-
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lence and in scenes of actual bloodshed and death.
The whole state was heaving with excitement. The bribery which had been so openly used by men high in offices on the bench, at the bar, in the senate; and the corruption, intrigue, intimidation, and vio- lence which had been employed to gain over the legislature to the plans of the speculators constitute a dark page in the political history of Georgia.
A new legislature was elected. Jared Irwin was chosen to succeed Governor Mathews. The house of representatives appointed a committee to examine and report respecting the validity and constitution- ality of said act, etc.
The committee was composed of James Jackson, William Few, James Jones, John Moore, David Mitchell, James H. Rutherford, David Emanuel,
Frazier, and George Franklin.
This committee entered upon their duties with promptness and energy. They met indeed with many obstacles and were threatened with violence by the enraged advocates of the supplemental bill; but they were not the men to be intimidated by threats of assasins or turned aside from their duty by the impotent rage of those whose iniquities were recoiling upon their own heads.
On January 22, General Jackson, for the com- mittee, reported that they were compelled to declare
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that the fraud, corruption, and collusion by which the said act was obtained, evinced the utmost de- pravity in the majority of the last legislature; and they brought in a bill to rescind the act. The bill was passed by a vote of forty-four to three in the house, and fourteen to four in the senate and was ยท concurred in by the Governor on February 13, 1796.
The first clause declared the act to be null and void :
The second clause orders the act to "be expunged from the face and indexes of the books of record of the State; and the enrolled law or usurped act shall then be publicly burnt, in order that no trace of so unconstitutional, vile, and fraudulent a transaction, other than the infamy attached to it by this law, shall remain in the office thereof."
The third clause declares that none of the laws, grants, deeds, respecting any contracts under the law, shall be admitted in evidence.
The fourth clause requires the return to the com- panies of the payments made by them to the State Treasurer.
The fifth clause asserts that to the State belongs the right of extinguishing the Indian title to the land.
The sixth clause requires this law to be promul- gated by the Governor throughout the United States
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in order to prevent frauds on individuals, so far as the nature of the case will admit.
On January 25, General Jackson, as Chairman of the investigating committee, reported to the house sundry affidavits "in the corruption practiced to ob- tain the Act," and by resolution of the house "all such proofs relating to the fraud and corruptions practiced to obtain the act for the disposal of the western territory" were to be entered in the Journal of the House "in order that the testimony so given may be perpetuated, as well for the satisfaction of the legislature and to show the grounds on which they proceeded as to hand down to future legisla- tures the base means by which the rights of the peo- ple were attempted to be bartered." Accordingly some twenty affidavits, showing more or less fraud, were spread on the Journals.
Two days after the Act was concurred in by the Governor, both branches of the Legislature adopted a report, presented by the Committee to whom was referred the mode by which the records were to be expunged of all traces of the described Act, and the Act itself burned, suggesting "that where it can pos- sibly be executed without injury to other records, the same shall be expunged from the book of records, by cutting out the leaves of the book wherein the same may have been recorded; a memorandum there-
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of expressing the number of pages so expunged, to be signed by the President of the Senate and Speak- er of the House of Representatives, and to be coun- tersigned by the Secretary and Clerk, which mem- orandum shall be inserted in the room or place of such expunged pages, in such manner as the Presi- dent and Speaker may direct. That where records and documents are distinct and separate from other records, the same being of record shall be expunged by being burnt. That the enrolled bill, and usurped Act, passed on the 7th day of January, 1795, shall, in obedience to the Act of the present session, be burnt in the square, before the State House, in the manner following: A fire shall be made in front of the State House door, and a line to be formed by the members of both branches around the same. The secretary of state (or his deputy) with the com- mittee shall then produce the enrolled bill and usurped Act among the archives of the State, and deliver the same to the President of the Senate who shall examine the same, and shall deliver the same to the Speaker of the House of Representatives for like examination; and the speaker shall then deliver them to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, who shall read aloud the title of the same, and shall then deliver them to the Messenger of the House, who shall then pronounce :
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" 'God save the State! And Long Preserve Her Rights! And May Every Attempt to injure Them Perish, As These Corrupt Acts Now Do!' "
In conformity with this program, the House of Representatives the same day sent a message to the Senate informing that body that they were ready to receive them in the Representative Halls in order to proceed to the duty prescribed. The Senate pro- ceeded to the Hall, and there facing the Representa- tives marched in procession to the spot selected, preceded by the committee bearing the prescribed bills in their hands. When they reached the spot the fixed program was carried out, and the Messen- ger, uttering the prescribed words, laid them on the fire, and the legislature stood in solemn circle around until the documents were burned to ashes.
Says Bishop Stevens, in his history of Georgia :
"The scene, aside from the circumstance that fire from heaven started the blaze, was sufficiently strik- ing and impressive. The sudden revolution in pub- lic opinion in one year, by which the citizens so changed their views upon the subject of the western territory, was a marvelous reaction in the popular mind. The expunging from the records the acts and doings pertaining to the bill, the legislative proces- sion, the solemn appeal to God by the Messenger who gave them to the flames and the stillness which
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marked the few moments which it required to con- sume them, was a spectacle not only never beheld in Georgia before, but unknown to any assembly on this continent; and it indicated as nothing else could, the intense sense or indignation as the dishonor cast upon the state, and the equally intense desire to burn out the infamy, purifying as by fire the archives of the state from such fraud begotten records."
There is a slight tendency now, among modern writers, to minimize the "fraud" in the sale of Geor- gia's western lands, and to present the view that those who sold them for a mere song do not deserve the ill fame that has always attached to their con- duct; and correspondingly, these latter-day writers rather make light of those men who in the name of the state repudiated that act. But no annalyst of those times has produced a single person in life when the lands were sold, who justified that bargain, and all those who were living at the time and left to pos- terity their views on the subject, have condemned those who participated in the sale, and pictured as unselfish patriots those who exposed the fraud and who rescinded the act. Wilson Lumpkin, in his auto- biography, Geo. P. Gilmer, in his "Georgians," Wm. Few, in his autobiography; Charlton, in his Life of Jackson; Hardin, in his life of Troup; Chappel, in his Miscellanies; McCall, in his History; all these,
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either themselves lived during those hectic days, or else came on shortly afterwards, and knew the men who were the actors in these scenes; and their voices are unanimous in the condemnation of those who par- ticipated in the sale of those lands and in the praise they bestow on James Jackson and his associates who the following year passed the rescinding act.
All honor to James Jackson ! Soldier, legislator, United States senator and governor ! He resigned his place in the senate of the United States and accepted a seat in the general assembly of Georgia in order to lead this fight. Where would we look for his counterpart? Whoever else resigned a place in the hall of embassadors for one in the Georgia legis- lature? What could have been his motive except such as proceeds from a sense of duty? All honor to his name !
Would that we had an exact reproduction on can- vas of the scene enacted here on the 15th day of February, 1796. Some one I know has attempted it. He may be sure that the goodly company stood under stately trees. Among them were the faithful David Emanuel, subsequently to serve as governor ; and Peter Earle, brilliant congressman and judge and governor; and Benjamin Taliaferro, soldier, congressman and judge; and David Meriwether, many times a congressman after a brilliant service
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in the Revolutionary army; and D. B. Mitchell, three times governor, and John Milledge, governor and United States senator, and Thomas Glascock, soldier and patriot; and Jared Irwin, warrior and statesman, and at this particular time, governor of the state; and William Few, mention of whom has already been made; and James Jackson. Doubtless the honor of actually drawing from heaven the fire that should be applied was conferred on James Jack- son. Over there is the parchment. Surrounded by the governor, the senators, with fellow representa- tives, he extends his good right arm-that same arm that held the sword when at the head of his legion in the Revolutionary war. In his hand is the glass- the same hand with which he received the surrender of the city of Savannah when the British siege was ended. He holds the sun glass between the sun and the dishonored paper. The rays focus, the heat from the orb first warmed, then heated, then browned, then set fire to the paper. A blaze burst forth. To ashes turned the original act. The deed is done. The crime has been set at naught.
Was there cheering? Were the sombre counte- nances of the onlookers changed? History was made, and an event had taken place that was des- tined to be referred to as often as Georgia history is studied; and there was closed the most dramatic scene in our historic pages.
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Did I say the scene was closed? Not so. Many of those who lobbied for the measure and who voted for it were by the force of public opinion liter- ally driven out of the state. Many a brilliant career was cut short by participation in the Yazoo fraud. On every stump in Georgia, James Jackson and T. U. P. Charlton, David B. Mitchell, John Milledge, George M. Troup and William H. Crawford shout- ed from the housetops "Down with the Yazoo men" -and down they went to ignominy and to oblivion. I said that history was made here at Louisville.
Referring to the statement in the Contsitution of 1798, that no bill or ordinance shall pass containing any matter different from what is expressed in the title thereof, Chief Justice Lumpkin, in the case of The Mayor and Alderman of the City of Savannah &c. vs. The State, &c., 4th Georgia, 26, 34, says :
"I would observe that the traditionary history of this clause is that it was inserted in the Constitution of 1798, at the instance of General James Jackson, and that its necessity was suggested by the Yazoo Act. That memorable measure of the 17th of Jan- uary, 1795, as is well known, was smuggled through the Legislature under the Caption of An Act 'for the payment of late State troops' and a declaration in its title of the right of the State to the unappro- priated territory thereof 'for the protection and sup-
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port of its frontier settlements.' This was the first time a provision of that sort appeared in any Con- stitution. Today it is contained in the organic laws of every State in the Union, except a few States in the New England group, (McElrath, Section 75)."
What else affecting the course of history, grew out of the Act providing for the sale, and the Act rescinding the former Act?
The great case of Fletcher vs. Peck (6th Cranch, 87), decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, at the February Term 1810, decided that the rescinding Act was unconstitutional, ruling that a law, annulling conveyances, is a law imparing the obligation of contracts within the meaning of the Federal Constitution and therefore null and void; and Fletcher against Peck, a feigned issue, in all probability, tried first in a Massachusetts Court, was a history making decision-one of the great, out- standing lan landmarks of our jurisprudence-was brought about by the passage of the law rescinding the sale of our own Yazoo Lands. No other decis- ion by that great Court has been cited oftener than has Fletcher vs. Peck.
Of this recision, Warren, in his history of the Supreme Court, (Volume I, page 392) says :
"It aroused vivid and excited interest throughout the country and vitally affected the course of politi-
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cal and economical history not only was this the first case in which the Court held a State law unconstitutional, but it also involved legislation which had been the subject of bitter controversy and vio- lent attack for over fifteen years in the State of Georgia and in the Congress of the United States."
The Yazoo Companies never obtained possession of the lands (Brown vs. Gilman, 4 Wheat, 255, 259).
They sold, or pretended to sell, to various per- sons, portions of these lands, who in turn pretended not to know of the fraud attending the sale and claimed to be innocent purchasers. They clamored for a settlement.
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