USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 14
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It was the ill fate of Col. George Matthews to fill the Exec- utive Chair at this date and to affix the signature that at once made the monstrous iniquity a law and fastened forever upon himself the character of a great public criminal. Vain would be any attempt to palliate his conduct, although there have been writers who ventured upon such attempt. The best that can be said in mitigation for him is that his entire action in the matter seemed to be the result as much of weak- ness as of wickedness, and excites our sorrow along with our anger whilst we are sternly consigning his name to dishonor. The heart cannot but feel some generous relenting towards this heroic, hard-fighting and thorough-going, though un- couth and unscholarly Revolutionary patriot and warrior, when we behold him elevated, after the close of the war, to a great political post for which he was wholly unfit and where he was destined almost certainly to fall a victim to his own utter incompetency and the misleading arts and in- fluence of those around him on whom he was obliged help- lessly to lean. The wounds received and the laurels won by such a man in the terrible days of his country's dangers and trials, "plead like angels, trumpet-tongued," in his favor ever afterwards, and cause us to look upon his worst political misdeeds with a gentleness of reprobation which we extend not to mere civilians and men who can show no blood earned title to the public gratitude. But, neverthe- less, Governor Matthews, in spite of this kindly popular feel- ing towards him and although no direct charge of being personally bribed and corrupted, so far as I ever heard, was at any time alleged against him, was politically ruined in Georgia by the odium of his official complicity with the Yazoo Fraud. It was enough for the people that by his single dissent he might have defeated that stupendous villainy and that he did not do it, but on the contrary gave it his assent and vitalized it with his signing hand. And besides there were other strongly exasperating circumstances against him. The two bills, the State Troops Act and that for the Yazoo Sale, were both before him for his signature at the same
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time. The former he signed and returned on the 28th of December. The latter he refused to sign and sent back with his objections on the same day. How it happened that so soon afterwards as the 7th of January he was gotten to fore- go all his objections and to sign another bill substantially the same, only enough altered to give him a pretext for saying that it was not the same but another bill, was never explained and naturally gave rise to deeply damaging sur- mises against him. And assuredly, moreover, his case was not bettered by the unhappy fact of his total neglect in his list of objections of the 28th of December, to take any notice of a matter so capital and striking as the omission in the Yazoo Bill of the above mentioned restrictions contained in the State Troops Act, which he had just examined and signed. His failure to notice and brand this omission cannot be viewed otherwise than as a mark of his sanction given to it at that time by implication, as afterwards it was expressly given when on the 7th of January, he finally signed the bill and made it a law.
The clue to the excessive anxiety we have noticed on the part of the Yazooists to have on the very face of their Legislation clear, merchantable titles, free from all restric- tions or contingencies, is to be found in the fact that their scheme was designed from the beginning to be one of rapid sales and conversion into money, not of protracted ownership awaiting the extinction of the Indian title by government and the subsequent gradual increase of the value of the lands. It was in order that they might successfully carry out this scheme that they wanted a law which they could parade and bepraise in the markets of the world as giving a present absolute estate, not merely future contingent rights and expectations. With such a law and titles under it good and specious on the surface though well known to themselves to be in reality unsound and vulnerable to attack by both the United States and Georgia, they hoped to be rapidly able to succeed in alluring into large purchasing
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strangers and uninformed, distant people, that class who are always predestined as their victims by wicked, shrewd-con- triving speculators.
But not only did these shrewd, enterprising speculators want and resolve to get per fas aut per nefas, titles that should be in all respects current and alluring in the land market, but they wanted all the world as a market for their immense and unrighteous landed wares. To this end, how- ever, it was necessary to contrive some way of evading the law of Georgia disabling aliens to hold land in this State. And here agian it was deemed expedient not to drive at their object openly but to seek it by legislative indirection and trickery. Their cunning plan was to have a clause inserted in the very Act of Sale affecting a patriotic hostility to foreigners becoming owners of real estate in Georgia. By this clause the Yazoo purchasers and their associates are prohibited from disposing of the lands in part or in the whole, in any way or manner, "to any foreign king, prince, po- tentate or power whatever." The palpable, precogitated ob- ject of inserting this clause was that the Yazoo companies should by clear implication be entitled to sell and convey to all other foreigners than the very few who fall under the description of "kings, princes, potentates and powers." And not only is this almost boundless license of selling to foreigners thus surreptitiously incorporated in the law, but it is also required to be set forth in the very face of the grants that were to be issued under the law to the companies, in order that foreigners might thereby be the more strongly tempted to become buyers, seeing that their right to buy was doubly secured both by the law itself and then by the State's grants and conveyances founded upon it. Fit companion- piece this to the villainous "supplementary" device to which it is appended and which we have but a moment ago had occasion to reprobate and brand !
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SECTION V.
Not for more than three score years and ten, not indeed until a new and monstrous race of political caitiffs, foul harpies of the North, the vile brood of a peace worse than war, of a reconstruction worse than ruin, swarmed down upon our fair and hapless South and made it one vast sickening scene of official atrocity and villainy, securely practised under a re- morseless Federal patronage, had the people of Georgia ever gotton over their vivid, loathing remembrance of this old Yazoo crime. Now, however, that renowned turpitude of the last century has been unseated from its preeminence. Far outstripped by the teeming infamies, political and pecuni- ary, of these latter times, it is no longer capable of exciting amazement in the recollecting mind. Little wonder is now felt that in young, immature Georgia, some eighty years ago, a gigantic, corrupt speculation, as remarkable for the ability and standing of the men concerned in it as for the abundance and baseness of the means they employed, should have succeeded in debauching and triumphing over a poorly enlightened and very diminutive legislative body of those early times.
Yes! very diminutive that body still was. For, although, by the formation of new counties the Senate had grown larger, still it consisted of only twenty members, every man of whom, save one, was in his seat on the final passage of the bill, and all voted except the President, Benjamin Tali- aferro, ten for the law, eight against it. Had it been neces- sary for the President to vote, it is well known that he would have cast his vote in the negative, so that the meas- ure really had a majority of but one in the Senate. In the lower House the number of members still remained at thirty-four, there being a peculiar provision in the new con- stitution against the number being increased by the creation of new counties. There were but twenty-nine members present, including the Speaker, Thomas Napier, who did not vote. Nineteen votes were given in the affirmative
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and only nine in the negative. It effected this, its second passage, through this body on the second of January, through the Senate on the third, and on the seventh Gover- nor Matthews affixed his hesitating signature, and the atro- cious deed was complete that has ever since resounded as a great shame in our history, blurring its virgin page, blight- ing every name implicated in it, and leaving more or less of blemish wherever a shadow of imputation connected with it has ever fallen. It required a mighty and multifarious ef- fort to accomplish it. Many men and every sort of men and means were subsidized and yet the change of a single vote in the Senate would have defeated it as we have just seen and said.
I will not undertake to reproduce in detail here the revolt- ing scenes of which Augusta was the theatre during that infamous session, when everything was venal, when the Legislative Halls were converted into shambles, and the honor of the State and the grandest public interests were shamelessly put up to open sale for the vile lucre-sake of traitorous Representatives and their corruptors. Reason abundant is there forsooth to deter from attempting such portrayal. For I hold no graphic pen, and then what pen could impart to those scenes aught of horrific effect or pun- gent interest nowadays, when men's minds have become seared by spectacles of the grossest depravity in the high as well as low places of the government passing continually before their eyes and passing not only without punishment but without shame or rebuke? Suffice it to say that every vote given for the law save one, that of Robert Watkins, was undeniably a corrupt vote purchased either with money or the gift of subshares in the speculation, or both. In aid moreover, of the measure, the active exertions and influence of men of weight and character out of the Legislature was in very many instances secured by similar means, or by pre- vailing on them to become interested on like terms with the original members of the companies. It is due, however, to the memory of numerous persons who became connected in
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this latter way with the speculation, seduced by the great and distinguished names of some leading men in it, to say that they were alike unknowing and incapable of the turpitude involved in the project, and that not a few, on their eyes being opened, instead of making haste after the example of their chiefs, to sell out and pocket their gains, repudiated the whole thing, receiving back subsequently under the provisions of the Rescinding Act of Georgia, the portions of the purchase money they had respectively contributed, whilst there were others who simply abandoned the pittance of one-fifth of the purchase money which it had devolved on them to pay. The report made on the 16th day of Febru- ary, 1803, by Messrs. Madison, Gallatin and Lincoln, com- missioners* under an Act of Congress for fuvestigating the Yazoo claims, is accompanied with a long catalogue of the names of persons, Georgians and others, secondary as well as original purchasers, who had thus withdrawn their pay- ments from the State Treasury, amounting in the aggregate to $310,695 15. Thus it appears that in this as in most cases where a great multitude of people are implicated, not only were there many different degrees of guilt, but those also were to be found who by their conduct eventually saved themselves from the reproach of knowingly persevering in crime.
In this connection, the honored name of Patrick Henryt comes strikingly up and claims some mention. Yielding to that rather too great greed for money which is said to have characterized him and not duly reflecting, it may be hoped, on the objections to the speculation, he became a leading member of the Virginia Yazoo Company of 1789. When, however, the heavy frowns and antagonism of Washing- ton aroused his attention to the demerits and criminality of the project, he seems to have stopped short ; at all events he allowed not himself to be connected with the subsequent Yazoo scheme, and is no more to be seen taking any part or
* American State Papers, Public Lands. Vol. 1, p. 200. tAmerican State Papers, Public Lands. Vol. 1, p. 132, 150.
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interest in the thing, sought for although his great name was to give it sanction and enhance its chances of success. Happy for his imperishable fame, this rather narrow escape,* and that in him a strong sense of character and an almost exorbitant love of shining repute among men were sufficient checks against that mean passion for riches which was the bane of not a few public and official men in that day as well as in our own more impure times.
In painful contrast with this conduct of the illustrious patriot orator stands that of a number of conspicuous, con- temporary characters whom, although clothed with public honors, neither that or any other consideration availed to restrain or reclaim from a career of turpitude and incivism into which they were drawn by the accursed thirst of gold. Their names, consequently, have found an unenviable berth in history, forever associated with the stench and stigma of the Yazoo Fraud. Nor do they deserve a better fate than that the more important among them at least should be re- called and gibbeted in these evil days of expiring public virtue and growing national vice and degeneracy. So may bad men, filling and betraying high public trusts, be taught what awaits them at the bar of posterity, however much they may flourish and prosper during their own base lives.
Behold, then, occupying a place among the most exalted national dignitaries of his day, and at the same time figuring in the van of this corrupt and corrupting speculation, James Wilson, of Pensylvania, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, a member for years of the old Continental Con- gress, a member also of the Convention that framed the Constitution of the United States and at this very time one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed at the first organization of that great tribunal, the very tribunal before which he well knew might come, and before which eventually did come, though after his
* Narrow, indeed, for some detriment he actually sustained in public estima- tion in Virginia from his connection with the Yazoo business, notwithstanding his early disappearance from it. Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry ; near the end.
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death, the question of the validity of the title acquired by himself and his companions in this vast and profligate trans- action. Behold this man stooping from his proud official elevation, bringing disrepute on the sublimest judicial Bench in the world, and becoming an active, leading partner interested to the extent of three quarters of a million of acres* in a foul, lawless, unpatriotic speculation of gigantic magnitude and wickedness. Behold him there not only mightily interested, but by that interest so demoralized as to become an industrious, bare-faced worker in the vile cause ;t behold him and from him learn how little assur- ance of purity the highest public station gives, and how little any official atmosphere is worth either as a safeguard or antidote against that moral poison for which poor human nature has such a lamentable affinity. Judge Wilson, un- happily, had run a long debasing career as a speculator, especially in Indian lands, dating back before the Revolu- tionary War, the proofs of which are to be found in the American State Papers by the petitions and memorials with which he, although a Judge of the Supreme Court, was not ashamed to importune Congress in behalf of Companies of speculators to which he belonged and of which he was the organ :- speculators, too, whose claims had a worse than Spanish character and stood upon a worse than the Spanish principle, because wholly unsupported by that precedent, governmental warrant and authority, which even the Spanish system imperatively required. These circumstances in re- gard to the Judge were doubtless well known to persons con- nected with the speculation residing in Philadelphia, the Judge's home, and became well known to Gen. Gunn also, whilst serving in Congress there. Hence the early and too well received overtures that were made to him. It was a great point to the Yazooists to have gained such a man as Judge Wilson to their ranks, though for his own fame and
* American State Papers, Public Lands. Vol. 1, p 111.
+White's Statistics. p 50.
¿American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. 1. p, 27, 72, 73. Sanderson's Lives of the Signers; Title, James Wilson.
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the honor of the great tribunal in which he sat, it is to be lamented that instead of listening to the overtures that were made to him, he did not like our more than Roman Sena- tor, Gen. James Jackson, firmly and indignantly repel them.
Side by side, fit yoke fellow with this Judge of the highest Federal Court, stands Nathaniel Pendleton, District Judge of the United States for the District of Georgia, who to his services as a lobbyist for the concern added those of chair- man of the meetings of the coalitionists, signing and issuing as such the certificates for shares donated to the bribed mem- bers of the Legislature and the hirelings employed to bny and influence their votes. Of the nature and amount of his reward no trace is to be found, but that it was great in pro- portion to the dignity and sanctity of the ermine he soiled and to the baseness and importance of the services he ren- dered there can be no doubt. t
See, also, in the train of these two Federal Judges, their bold Aid-de-Camp, Mathew McAlister, District Attorney of the United States for Georgia, a leading member of the Georgia Company, one of the original grantees, who unlike the culprit Judges and some others, shrank not from having his name emblazoned on the face of the Act, where it stands opprobriously eternized, little advantaged by Gen. Jackson's consuming fire. See, also, William Stith, Judge of the Superior Courts of Georgia, and at that time there were but two such Judges and but two Circuits, the Eastern and the Western, to which the two Judges were equally elected and in which they had to preside by turns, thus bringing cach Judge into every county of the State once a year in his judi- cial ridings. Judge Stith sold his great influence growing out of his office and these, his annual visitations all over the State, for $13,000 in money and some delusive hopes of the Governorship that were held out to him. The money he actually pocketed and found himself reproached afterwards
tAmerican State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. I, p. 145, 147. White's Statis- tics, p. 50.
-
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for not being generous with it to his poor relations .* Ilis colleague in the Judgeship, the pure and upright George Walton, one of Georgia's immortal Signers, was incorrupti- ble, and his name is a pride to the State forever, free from spot or blemish.
Stepping across the Savannah river, Colonel, afterwards General, Wade Hampton claims our attention as one of the imposing figures in the Yazoo group. He was a member elect to Cougress from South Caorlina, a man, moreover, of high prestige from having been a gallant officer of the Revolution, distinguished now for his great wealth, his com- manding position in society, his extraordinary energy, en- terprise and capacity in affairs, all which necessarily made him a power wherever he put his hands or set his head. Behold this man, destined in after years to immense riches and to become widely famous as the most princely planter of all the South, and whom in his vigorous old age Mr. Madison honored by reproducing him on the field, first as a Brigadier General, in anticipation of a war with England, and then upon the breaking out of the war, as a Major General. But he was not more successful in adorning his gray hairs with new laurels than were the other Revolutionary veterans whom the President unluckily called from retirement and clothed with high command. The only distinction he won of which I am aware was that of being the ill-starred Gen. Wil- kinson's evil genius, superseding him by Presidential order at New Orleans, in 1810; quarreling instead of co-operating with him on the Canada line in 1813; and yet never called to any account or subjected to any Presidential censure therefor. But behold him now in his proud meridian of manhood, embarking in this vast speculation with his great means and influence, and a much more colossal interest than any other man. And further, behold him losing no time after the buying from the State, but with characteristic sa- gacity and celerity hastening to become a mighty seller of what he had bought, and in less than a year safely shifting
*American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. I, p. 148.
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off his enormous portion of the prey into other hands at a huge profit and putting the money in his pocket, eluding thus the annulling vengeance of Georgia, which he well knew would soon start up in pursuit, but which he also knew could not overtake and rend the great villainy until another Legislature should meet and have a chance to act upon it .*
Along with Col. Hampton, South Carolina sent to Augusta on the great felonious occasion another man of hardly less note and force, though noted in a different way, namely, Robert Goodloe Harper, also a member of Congress, destined to become distinguished on that theatre, great both as a lawyer and statesman, whose speeches, long ago collected and published in two goodly octavos, I read and even studied in my young days and thought they ranked him among the giants of those old times. What drove him or drew him from the political field and from South Carolina afterwards, and sent him to Baltimore to bury himself there for the remain- der of his life in the practice of law, I have never known. It may have been a combination of causes. For in addition to his large interest of 131,000 acres, and consequent great ac- tivity in the Yazoo matter, he was one of those who perse- vered in 1801, through all the thirty-six ballotings, in cast- ing the vote of South Carolina for Aaron Burr against Mr. Jef- ferson in that fearful conflict for the Presidency; and so perse- vered in the face of the unquestioned fact that Mr. Jefferson
*American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. 1, 197, and elsewhere under the Yazoo head. Military Affairs, Vol. 1, page 462, 479. Extract from White's Statistics, page 50 :
"In the lobbies of the Senate and House alternately, were to be seen a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, from Pennsylvania, with $25,000 in his hands, it was said, for a cash payment; a Judge of the District Court of the United States, from Georgia, passing off shares of land to the members for their votes; and a Senator from Georgia, who had perfidiously neglected to proceed to Philadelphia to take his seat in Congress, and who was absent from his post until the three last days of the session, bullying with a loaded whip and by turns cajoling the numerous understrappers in speculation. There were to be seen also a Judge of our Superior Courts and other eminent Georgians, &c.
"Our sister State of South Carolina was also represented by one who was regarded as a prince of speculators, &c."
7
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was alike the electoral and popular choice of the State. The odor of both which passages in his life became afterwards so intensely bad in South Carolina as to have probably ren- dered the atmosphere there decidedly unsuited to him, polit- ically, professionally and socially.
Coming back to Georgia, we behold on the speculators' dark roll not a few names of that day highly respectable in all the walks of private life, from the shades of which, as they never emerged while living, it would be wrong to drag them from the repose of the grave now that they are dead. Among them there were not wanting gifted minds and as- piring spirits who yearned for a high and bright career, but . their political star, quenched beneath the horizon by their Yazoo complicity, was never allowed to ascend and shine in our firmament. Such seems to have been generally the fate of those who had come within blighting contact of the great villainy. To the sons of ambition it was the deadly polit- ical sin of that era, and for it no length of time or depth of penitence or merit of subsequent demeanor could ever bring amnesty or oblivion.
The names we have recited and others of less celebrity, but of no mean pretensions in their time, show what an imposing array of talent, character and influence, and especially what a strong Law Staff the Yazooists boasted in their ranks, and account abundantly for the legal skill and subtlety and the remarkable technical artifice and ability apparent in the contriving and framing of the legislation procured from the State. And it is by no means surprising that by the combined efforts of so many such men, with abundant pecuniary means at their command and no scruples or restraints of principle in their way, surrounded and reinforced, as they were besides, by a numerous phalanx of active subalterus and colaborers, our raw, petty, unschooled Legislature should have been jostled from its propriety, started, as it were, from its per- pendicularity, and made the more easy to give way before the grosser engines of bribery and corruption that were held in reserve and at length brought powerfully into play.
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