USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 16
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See also the speech of Mr. Clark and others in the same debate.
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parts of the Union, chiefly in the great cities of the North, and to some extent also to foreigners, at prices ranging from eight and ten to twenty cents per acre, resulting in immense aggregate gain. Thus did the original grantees (except the few who took back their money and gave up their interest in the land under the Rescinding Act,) achieve a complete triumph, carrying out successfully their programme, which was neither more nor less than by fraud and corruption to purchase these lands from the State for a mere trifle, and then quick- ly to shift them off at a huge profit upon others, whom it was their plan to leave to their fate, whatever it might be, of danger, loss or ruin. The Yazoo speculation is seen con- sequently standing before us bristling with successful fraud, at both ends : Fraud, first, in the purchase from the State, and then fraud again in the sales by the original purchasers to the various secondary buyers.
But it was not merely the above mentioned Report and Resolutions in Congress which Washington's message called forth. The two Houses, incensed at what Georgia had done, felt at the first moment a strong impulse to question her title, and that of the speculating Companies derived from her, and anticipating that the adverse Spanish title would now soon devolve on the United States by treaty for what- ever it might be worth, determined to probe to the bottom the right of the State to the territory she had so unpatriot- ically alienated to a knot of speculators in preference to the United States. To this end, at the very close of the session a joint resolution was adopted directing the Attorney Gen- eral, Charles Lee, to prepare and present to the next Con- gress a report on the title of Georgia. That eminent law officer took abundant time and was at the utmost pains, and at length, on the 29th of April, 1796, after more than a year had elapsed from the date of the call upon him, and six months after the Spanish cession to the United States by the treaty of San Lorenzo, he presented his report, which is now to be found in the American State Papers, filling more than thirty great folio pages-forming a fine specimen
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of the thorough and faithful manner in which the public men of that day performed their duty .* Georgia, in partic- ular, is under obligations to Mr. Attorney General Lee for his laborious research and for the great mass of interesting documentary materials relating to her infantine period, which, by ransacking both sides of the Atlantic, he was enabled to bring together. These materials, upon being studied, demonstrated instead of damaging the title of Georgia from Great Britain, and placed it indubitably above that which the United States got from. Spain by the treaty of San Lorenzo.
There cannot be a doubt that the call on the Attorney General on this occasion was caused by an opinion prevalent to some extent in Congress that the title of Georgia, derived from Great Britain, and now nefariously conveyed to the. Yazooists, would, upon investigation, have to give way be- fore what they supposed would be the better title the Uni- ted States were expecting soon to acquire from Spain, and that thus the title of the Yazooists, acquired from Georgia, would be superseded. This opinion was not unfrequently expressed in debate and in the reports of committees. Nor was it an opinion merely: With many there was a strong wish to the same effect,-so intense was the resentment against the Yazoo sale, and so powerful the desire to defeat it. But both the opinion and the wish were soon seen by everybody to be utterly inadmissible in the presence of the great diplomatic fact that the title of Georgia constituted the only ground of claim and right advanced by our country in its great territorial strife with Spain, and being thus the banner under which that strife was waged and won on our side, could not now by any possibility be hauled down and set at naught by the United States in the very face of the great territorial victory they had just achieved under it.
" American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. 1, Pages 34, 69.
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SECTION VII.
We have now reached a point in this long and intricate drama, at which the curtain drops for several years on the General Government and Georgia re-enters on the scene, to become this time the fierce assailant and undoer of the mon- strous villainy that had been so recently enacted in her Leg- islature and under her name. Though the hue and cry against the enormity was first raised, as we have seen, at the Federal Capital and by the Federal Executive and Con- gress, yet here at home, the shock was far the deepest and most violent. It was here the crime struck with its most heinous, deadly effect, despoiling the State at once of a vast public property and her precious public honor,-not only robbing her of invaluable territories, but doing it under cir- cumstances that brought imputation on her national patriot- ism and magnanimity,-doing it, moreover, by debauching her trusted public servants, whom she had chosen to be the guardians, not betrayers of her high interests and her fair fame. Thus had that crime wounded her in a point dearer than landed or monied wealth, tarnished her reputation, de- filed at its young fountain head the eternal stream of her history and polluted the waters mingled with which her name was to go down to future times, and especially to her own children forever.
I design not recounting minutely the oft told, familiar story of the State's strong sovereign action in resentment and redress of this celebrated wrong. That story, at once simple and striking, has ever been so much an attractive theme to writers and talkers as to have become thread bare and to re- coil from any thing like a labored handling now. Prelimi- narily, however, it should be told that the first effect of the sale on the mass of the people was stunning stupefaction and amazement. They found difficulty in believing that the deed had been done. The entire failure of the measure be- fore the preceding Legislature and the entire quietude and silence in regard to it that had ensued, had rendered them
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unsuspecting and secure, and they had let the subject pass off from their minds and it occurred not to them that it had not been equally dropt by the speculating Companies. They were unaware that these latter had been during the whole interim stealthily, yet industriously, at work every where, both in and out of Georgia, and had really gotten into their hands the complete mastery of the game before they again came out to light and began to take open steps to- wards their object. It is wonderful what a profound privacy they had succeeded in maintaining in their widely ramified operations, a privacy kept up to the last possible moment. Even after their bill was introduced, there was no notoriety beyond Augusta and its neighborhood that such a measure was on hand. No publicity had been given to it, no an- nouncement made of it by any name or title pointing to its character or contents. A lying title concealed its true nature which consequently was not indicated by anything on the journal of either House or in the newspapers, which were wont to give only lists of the titles of the bills intro- duced.
The consequence of all which was that the people awoke to find themselves outraged and robbed without having had any notice of the design or warning of their danger or the least chance of outcry and resistance. At first they were likewise ignorant of the turpitude of the means by which the wrong had been effected, or what strangers, or who among themselves except the guilty members of the Legis- lature and the few grantees named in the act, were concern- ed in its perpetration. They soon, however, became better and bitterly enlightened. The astounding discovery broke upon them that the cancerous fibres of the monstrous transac- tion pervaded not only the State but the United States, and embraced they knew not how many powerful and influential names and shrewd, unscrupulous characters. They were especially struck with the successful pains that had been taken to enlist in its interest all the men in Georgia who were prominent enough to attract the base courtship of the
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Yazooists and pliant enongh to become their tools and ac- complices. Most of those to whom the people would natur- ally have looked to become their leaders and to champion their cause in this great emergency, were either bought up and subsidized on the side of the enemy by their own inte- rests or paralyzed by their relations to interested parties. Besides, not many men were there, indeed, who were at all competent to such leadership and championship as was wanted. Nothing short of the highest courage and the greatest energy, reputation, talents and self devotion could constitute the necessary qualifications. He who should give himself to the people's service on this occasion had need of a charmed life and an invincible soul, as well as of a con- centrated and commanding mind: For assuredly it was a lion's den he would have to enter, a fiery furnance through which he would have to pass. And by universal concession there was but one man in the State, in all respects equal and fitted to the exigency, and who at the same time had kept himself pure and intact, and but for the extraordinary self-abnegation and lofty, patriotic intrepidity and devotion of that one man, the people would have been without a leader and champion, such as the case imperatively required. That man was General James Jackson, the noblest and most admirable name in the history of Georgia, then a member of the United States Senate as Mr. Few's succes- sor and General Gunn's colleague.
I do not know that I can open the part acted by this ex- traordinary man against the Yazoo Fraud better than by recalling a personal reminiscence of my own full half a cen- tury old and more. It was at Hancock Superior Court, at April term, 1823,-a date at which the Governor was still chosen by the Legislature, and as the name of one of those understood to be aspiring to the office was to be found in the old public documents as the owner of a few Yazoo subshares, conversation began to be somewhat turned to the subject of the Yazoo Fraud and young men, especially, were keen in- quirers. It was under these circumstances that a number
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of the junior members of the bar were sitting one night after supper in the large, pleasant room, up stairs, which our good host, William G. Springer, whose soul contended with his body, which should be biggest, had assigned to us across the street,-when we were agreeably startled. by Judge Dooly* entering to pay us a visit,-a courtesy on the part of the Judges not uncommon in those days. The Judge, whose mind was a rich treasury of the miscellanies of Georgia, past and present, and whose manner of saying everything was singularly plain, condensed and incisive, was soon drawn out on the Yazoo Fraud. My recollection has ever since been perfectly distinct of the following remark made by him in the course of his conversing : " The peo- ple," he said, " were generally against the Yazoo sale, but the rich and leading men were mostly for it, because, in most instances, they or some of their friends or relations were interested in it. The people wanted to get rid of it, but did not know how to do it. They had nobody to lead and contrive for them, and Gen. Jackson resigned his seat in the United States Senate and came home and ran for the Legislature in Chatham county, and was elected to lead and contrive for the people."
Such were the very words of Judge Dooley to us young men about Gen. Jackson-words which struck me greatly and imprinted themselves indelibly, enkindling my mind with a most vivid and exalted conception of the illustrious character, to whom they related and making him from that moment a study and almost an idolatry to me. The annals of mankind teem with the names of heroes, martyrs, self- sacrificers, martial, moral, religious-men who have held their lives and their ease as nothing in the scale against glory, duty, honor ; and yet among them all I am unable
* Whoever may feel curious as to what sort of physiognomy belonged to that very striking man, John M. Dooly, long the Judge of the Northern Circuit, the greatest wit as all agreed, and generally conceded to have been also the greatest judicial intellect of his day, may see a wonderfully true likeness of him (Adonised, however.) in the portrait of the celebrated painter, Gilbert Stuart, in the 1st Volume of the American Portrait Gallery.
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to recollect any instance parallel and fully up to this con- duct of Gen. Jackson so pointedly stated by Judge Dooly, so barely and sleepily mentioned by history. Certainly our own country, vast and diversified as it is, has hitherto fur- nished nothing equal to it or like it, nor does it promise ac- cording to present symptoms ever to do so. Does any man believe that there is now to be found in all the low minded ranks of power and of the public service a single bosom in which even a dormant possibility dwells of such sublime, self-denying, unselfish patriotism ? What United States Senator would now resign his seat with yet four years to run and come home and seek the humblest Representative post known to our system of Government,-and all for the sake of the people and their rights and vindication ?
Gen. Jackson, however, had given some evidence on a previous occasion in his life of his capability of this ne plus ultra of public virtue. In 1788, when but thirty years old, he had been elected to the office of Governor of the State, and declined accepting it upon the ground of lacking age and ex- perience. It was in full keeping with this act of noble, pa- triotic modesty and humility that he should afterwards in 1795, have so subjugated an ambition of the most ardent and lofty type as to give up the highest and become a candi- date for the lowest place in political service, because he be- held his beloved Georgia in a mighty trouble in which she needed the sacrifice from him, and in which by making it he could do so much more and better for her, although at the cost of doing so much less and worse for himself.
For well he knew not only what he was surrendering, but also to what he was exposing himself when he magnani- mously resolved to descend from the high round of the polit- ical ladder to which he had climbed down to the very bot- tom, there to scuffle and fight, "lead and contrive for the people," both against all the bad men who had combined, and all the good men who had been misled, to become the State's betrayers and robbers, or the supporters of its betray- ers and robbers. He knew what enemies he was necessitat-
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ing himself to make and how deeply they would be enven- omed against him, and that their thirst for his blood would be only less keen than their greed for the prey he was bent on snatching from their grasp. Heknew, in fine, that from the first moment to the last of the work on which he was entering, he would have to carry his life in his hand, although the ultimate fate that awaited him lay concealed from hu- man view, and none could foresee that a life so dear and in- valuable was destined to pass away, alas ! so prematurely- a slow-wasting sacrifice, long offered up on the altar of Geor- gia's interest and honor .*
From the first Gen. Jackson had been outspoken and ve- hement in his denunciations of the sale, and had contributed greatly to rousing the popular rage against it. This,-even before he had doffed his Senatorial robes for a candidacy for the State Legislature, and thereby formally entered the lists as the people's leader and champion against a host of powerful and unscrupulous men whose mortal fear and hatred he thenceforward incurred. The people at once hailed him and rallied to him, and it was not long before under his brave
*Col. Benton, in his Abridgement of the Congressional Debates, Vol. III. twice comments upon Gen. Jackson and the cause of his death. At p. 338 is the following note at the close of the debate on the Yazoo Claims :
"Mr. Randolph was the great opposer of these claims in Congress and Gen- eral Jackson their great opposer in Georgia. It was he, who aroused the feeling that overthrew the General Assembly who made the grant, and elected the Legislature which annulled the Act, and burned the record of it. He was in the Senate of the United States with James Gunn, the Senator alluded to in the debate as being engaged in the Fraud, and lost his life in the last of the many duels which his opposition to that measure brought upon him."
And again at page 465, in a note to the proceedings in Congress on the occa. sion of Gen. Jackson's death, March 19th, 1806, Col. Benton says among other things : "He was a man of marked character, high principle and strong temper- ament-honest, patriotic, brave, hating tyranny, oppression and meanness in in every form ; the bold denouncer of crime in high as well as in low places ; a ready speaker, and as ready with his pistol as his tongue, and involved in many duels on account of his hot opposition to criminal measures. The de- feat of the Yazoo Fraud was the most signal act of his Legislative life, for which he paid the penalty of his life, dying of wounds received in the last of the many duels, which his undaunted attacks upon that measure brought upon him."
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auspices and their fierce enthusiasm the battle into which they had plunged was substantially won. For the storm quickly overspread the State with a violence that appalled the Yazooists and their myrmydons, and they everywhere slunk and cowered before it long before the election day came. But still Jackson's hot and heavy blows were not mitigated, nor did the people's vengeful energy slacken. It was more than even the bravo, Gunn, could brave or bear. He became utterly paralyzed and annihilated, as it were, by the intense, crushing detestation of which he was sensible of having be- come the object, and we hear no more of him whatever ex- cept that he continued to occupy to the last day of his new, basely gotten term, the seat in the National Senate, which he at once obscurely filled and flagrantly dishonored. The bribed Senators and Representatives in the Legislature met from their constituents a fate similar to that of their brib- ing, bullying chief. The tempest of public indignation against them was such as made not a few of them tremble for their personal safety on their return home. But their fears were groundless. Such was the orderly, law abiding character of our ancestors, except in cases where society is obliged to resort to the "higher law" for its purgation and protection, that, content with the sort of penalty which God inflicted on Cain, they simply branded their culprit legislators and consigned them to political death and social ostracism and infamy.
In making this statement I am not unaware that a sur- mise older than my earliest recollection, indeed, older than myself, long existed in some minds, making the case of Roberts Thomas, the recreant Senator from Hancock, whose high-priced vote turned the scale in favor of the Yazoo sale, an exception to this eulogium on the people's moderation. But even on the worst supposition anybody ever entertained (which was that Jonathan Adams, or some other person, whose dark secret was never suspected, followed him from Hancock in his flight and overtook and assassinated him in South Carolina) it was but the crime of an individual to
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which the public was in no way party or privy. An uncon- cealed, formal flogging, "hugging a sapling,"* meanwhile, or some other still lighter corporal punishment and disgrace was all he ever had to fear (and it was this fear that made him flee) from his incensed constituents who never dreamed of anything harsher against him than his ignominous ex- pulsion from their midst. Not a man in 'Hancock ever har- bored such a thought as that of pursuing and assassinating him after his flight.t The most probable theory of his murder is that it was procured by some arch fiend among the Yazooists. Thomas' vacilation, timidity and extortion had already excited their displeasure and uneasiness before he gave that vote for them, which they were obliged to have at any price, because if given the other way it would be fa- tal to them. His vote obtained and the law passed, their uneasiness about him was still kept alive by his indiscre- tions before he left Augusta and by his coward weakness after he got home. And when soon afterwards he took to flight, thereby proclaiming not only his fears, but, as it was
* Sallard's Affidavit, American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. 1, p. 149.
¡Both White in his Statistics of Georgia, page 50, and Gov. Gilmer in his book, entitled "Georgians," take it for granted that Thomas met his tate from the hands of some of his constituents. Gov. Gilmer, though not naming Jona- than Adams, indicates him clearly to every Hancock man as the assassin. The logic which inculpated Adams, ran in this wise: "The Adamses were a strong charactered and very leading, patriotic family in the county and were particularly indignant at Thomas' Yazoo vote and against Thomas himselt for it. Thomas fled and was assassinated. After which Jona. Adams fell into bad health and became a great hypochondriac for a number of years. Therefore, some people wondered whether he had not something dreadful on his conscience and whether that something was not the killing of Thomas." Such was the syllo- gism that I heard occasionally whispered in Hancock in my boyhood .- of which it will be seen that the premises being weak, the conclusion is a mere doubt or wonder. By the time it reached Oglethorpe county it must have be- come a positive belief or Gov. Gilmer would not have put it in his book as a fact. This sort of reasoning was liable, however, to refutation and was actu- ally refuted by Adams' eventual recovery of his health, mental and physical.
Gov. Troup was in Congress during the Yazoo discussions, and in a speech qnoted by Gen. Harden in his Life of him, allndes to the suspicion that Thomas' assassination was contrived by the Yazooists. Such is my recollection, but I have not the book at hand.
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argued, his and their guilt also, which they were solicitous should not be noised abroad, at least until they should have time to sell off their ill-acquired lands,-under the im- pulse of malignant fear, fury and precaution, they contrived his death by the hand of some hired assassin who dogged him from Augusta beyond doubt. For it was the very night after passing through that city that he was killed. And thus was stilled forever that tongue from which alone they had fears of the early betrayal of the yet secret crime of the corruption they had used, and the continued secrecy of which long enough for their purposes they madly hoped might be secured by the prompt taking off of one whom they regard- ed with suspicion and fear as having it in his power and as being weakly liable to make damaging disclosures against them. So does crime breed crime, the progeny often more hideous than the parent, as all prose and verse, all history and observation have always proclaimed.
But although there was so much popular excitement which found expression through public meetings, the presentments of Grand Juries, the voice of the Press, and by petitions and memorials from every quarter which, numerously signed, were sent up to a Constitutional Convention about to be held at Louisville in the ensuing month of May,* yet the people never fully understood how bad and desperate the state of things was, till after that Body had met and proved itself false to all their expectations. Then it was that the veil was entirely lifted, disclosing a spectacle for which they were unprepared, the spectacle of the Convention itself act- ing as an accessory to the Yazoo Fraud and playing strong- ly into its hands. This great and new fangled treachery, more infamous than that of the Yazoo Legislature in propor- tion as a Constitutional Convention is a Body more exalted and more highly trusted than an ordinary Legislative As- sembly, has long since died out of the minds of men. But it becomes necessary even at this late date to disinter it from
* Benton's Abridg. Debates, Vol. III, p. 325. White's Statistics, p. 51.
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its long oblivion as forming a part not less material than re- pulsive of the odious history through which we are wading.
The Convention, then, of May, 1795, was the child of the Constitution of 1789, a Constitution rather hurriedly gotten up by our forefathers to meet the advent of the newly launched Federal system of the United States which Georgia was among the first to greet and accept. Care, however, was wisely taken by the State's Constitution makers of '89 to insert in their hasty framework of government a provision for its own early revision and emendation. That provision required that at the election of members of the Legislature in 1794, delegates should also be chosen, three from each county, to meet at such time and place as the Legislature should ap- point to deliberate and determine what alterations and amend- ments should be made in the Constitution. It thus happen- ed that this election of members of the Convention took place at the same time and by the same constituencies and under all the same circumstances and influences with the election of the members of the Yazoo Legislature, and the specula- tors were altogether too shrewd a set of men not to see that it was best to have the Convention as well as the Legislature on their side. They took their measures accordingly. Great though quiet and secret pains were used to pack the Convention with their friends and with persons thought to be accessible to the influences they could bring to bear. They wanted, too, at least one master mind and commanding character there to watch over their interests, to lead and manage for them and to keep things in such a channel as would be for their advantage. They found and returned such a person in George Walker, of Richmond county. This gentleman ranked among the first men in the State for talents, address, popularity and high future promise, and was, by all odds, the very foremost of the Georgians, whom the Yazooists had succeeded in enlisting in their scheme. He was one of' their leading partners and his name stands out with those of James Gunn and Matthew McAllister,
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